Elemental 

Forces 

In  Home  Missions 


♦  LEMUEL  C.  BARNES  * 


/.  /^.  />5", 


<^^  PRINCETON,  N.  J.  *^ 


Purchased   by  the    Hamill    Missionary   Fund. 


1938     '    -^^^Uel    ca7  7  / 


ELEMENTAL    FORCES    IN 
HOME    MISSIONS 


ELEMENTAL    FORCES 
IN    HOME    MISSIONS 


BY 

LEMUEL  CALL  BARNES 

Author  of  "  Two  Thousand  Years  of  Missions  Before  Carey," 
"Shall  Islam  Rule  Africa  f  Etc. 


JAN  19  1915 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London     and     Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1912,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York :  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  123  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


FORESPEECH 


ALL  events  have  zestful  meaning  to  the 
modern  man  when  seen  in  their 
genetic  relations.  We  want  to  know 
how  great  forces  are  begotten  and  what  they 
bget.  Christianizing  a  new  continent  is  the 
most  stupendous  of  evolutionary  processes. 
We  care  more  to  learn  the  dynamics  of  it  than 
the  statistics. 

The  undertakings  of  material  civilization 
involve  large  principles.  They  are  titanic  in 
scope.  But  the  forces  at  play  in  the  American 
missionary  enterprise  are  vaster — are  nothing 
less  than  cosmic.  The  following  chapters  are 
intended  to  show  the  connection  between  some 
of  these  universal,  elemental  factors  and  their 
concrete  products. 

Chapter  One  show^  that  our  nation  more 
than  any  other  was  conceived  for  the  purpose 
of  spiritual  leadership  on  the  whole  planet  and 
that  it  is  now  coming  to  that  high  destiny  or 
— missing  it. 

Chapter  Two  shows  that  the  entire  upward 
march  of  humanity  by  means  of  vast  migra- 
5 


6  Forespeech 

tions  of  races  over  the  face  of  the  earth  is 
coming  to  its  final  and  far  greatest  develop- 
ment in  present-day  America,  making  this  the 
crisis  of  human  evolution. 

Chapter  Three  shows  that  the  primitive 
processes  of  creation  are  contemporary  in  the 
very  highest  realm,  the  creation  of  communi- 
ties and  commonwealths,  and  are  acting  with 
a  swiftness  never  before  approached. 

Chapter  Four  shows  that  in  this  land  the 
fundamental  principle  of  human  welfare,  the 
sense  of  social  justice,  is  now  coming  to  the 
keenest  activity  and  widest  application  ever 
known. 

Chapter  Five  shows  that  the  tie  of  neighbor- 
hood which  is  at  the  basis  of  all  relationships 
in  time  and  eternity  is  coming  to  a  new  inter- 
national meaning  on  this  continent. 

Chapter  Six  shows  that  the  great  genetic 
factors  can  achieve  their  natural  end  only 
when  all  the  forces  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
on  earth  adopt  the  definite  method  of  cooper- 
ation in  place  of  both  the  traditional  but  prac- 
tically discredited  methods  of  segregation  and 
consolidation. 

L.  C.  B. 
New  York  City. 


CONTENTS 


I.  International  Ideals 9 

II.  Ethnic  Migrations 29 

III.  Creative  Pioneering 42 

IV.  Social  Justice 65 

V.  National  Neighborhood 73 

VI.  Cooperative  Action 91 


International  Ideals 

"  All  nations  have  their  message  from  on  high, 
Each  the  messiah  of  some  central  thought 
For  the  fulfillment  and  delight  of  man." 

THE  poet-statesman  Lowell  sets  forth  in 
these  lines  a  fact  of  the  first  magni- 
tude. The  highest  achievement  of 
any  nation  is  to  perceive  clearly  that  it  has  a 
messianic  function  and  then  to  perform  it  with 
intelligent,  unwavering,  ever  increasing  pur- 
pose. Most  nations  do  it  blindly  and  so  in  a 
bungling  way — commonly  a  self-destructive 
way.  That  to  a  tragic  degree  was  true  of  the 
ancient  nation  which  was  most  aware  of  its 
messianic  mission.  Shall  it  be  so  with  the 
United   States? 

We  may  go  faster  and  get  further  in  finding 
an  answer,  as  well  as  keep  together  best,  if  we 
start  with  a  few  elemental  facts,  the  simplest 
kind  of  certainties  in  nature  and  history. 
9 


10  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

Everything  that  lives  (except  man)  is  the 
product  of  two  factors.  Man  is  largely — more 
largely  than  most  suppose — the  product  of  the 
same  two  factors,  heredity  and  environment. 
But  in  man,  along  with  these  two,  there  is  a 
third  factor  which  gives  him  uniqueness,  dif- 
ference from  every  other  living  thing.  This 
factor  is  personal  choice,  self-determination. 
This  it  is  that  makes  human  life  sublime. 

This  element  belongs  to  each  man  by  him- 
self. Since,  however,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  a  human  being  out  of  organic  relation  to 
other  human  beings,  this  element  of  subHmity 
belongs  to  groups  of  people  as  well  as  to  the 
individuals  in  the  groups.  Families,  churches, 
cities,  states,  nations,  are  not  only  what  their 
heredity  and  environment  make  them,  but  also 
what  they  make  themselves. 

The  classic  instance  is  Rome.  She  made 
herself  magnificent  and  then  ruined  herself — 
gave  laws  to  regulate  the  human  race,  but  went 
to  pieces  herself.  Back  of  Rome  there  loomed 
on  the  continent  of  Africa,  an  empire  so  vast 
and  solid  that  its  pyramids  have  survived  the 
sand-tides  of  Sahara  and  its  hieroglyphics 
have  developed  into  the  very  alphabets  of 
civilization.  Beyond  Europe  and  Africa,  on 
the  mother-continent  of  Asia,  there  is  a  similar 


International  Ideals  11 

story  of  a  prodigious  civilization,  or  rather 
series  of  civilizations,  along  the  Euphrates. 
They  played  a  great  part  in  the  development 
of  history  and  then  tumbled  into  oblivion. 
Who  dares  to  assert  or  to  tacitly  assume  that 
our  own  tremendous  civilization  on  the  conti- 
nent of  North  America  is  outside  the  realm 
of  self-determination  and  therefore  possible 
self-termination?  In  view  of  these  broadest, 
simplest  facts  of  nature  and  history,  it  stands 
our  nation  in  hand,  instead  of  drifting,  to 
steer.  As  to  our  having  a  messianic  function 
in  the  world  we  may  learn  best  from  the 
nation  which  had  such  a  function  most  un- 
mistakably. When  Frederick  the  Great,  petu- 
lantly, imperiously,  demanded  of  his  chaplain, 
proof  in  one  word  of  the  reality  of  God's  hand 
in  human  history,  the  answer  flashed  like  a  bolt 
from  the  sky,  "  Sire !  the  Jews."  One  of  the 
three  recorded  times  when  Jesus  Christ,  the 
replacer  of  Judaism,  the  founder  of  cosmo- 
politanism, stood  face  to  face  with  outside  peo- 
ple, he  affirmed  that  Israel  was  messianic.  It 
wias  at  the  moment,  too,  when  he  was  making 
one  of  his  clearest  declarations  of  the  univer- 
sality of  true  religion.  Yet  he  insisted  that 
"  Salvation  is  of  the  Jews."  This  is  supreme 
endorsement  of  the  messianic  ideal  of  a  nation. 


12  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

Let  us  put  side  by  side  the  messianic  con- 
sciousness of  the  Jewish  nation  and  of  the 
American  nation.  Messianic  as  a  word  means 
anointed,  as  an  idea  it  means  set  apart  for 
special  service,  anointing  being  a  feature  of 
oriental  Inauguration  ritual.  Priests  were 
anointed,  kings  were  anointed.  In  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Jews  their  whole  nation  was 
anointed. 

"  Thou  wentest  forth  for  the  salvation 
of  thy  people,  for  the  salvation  of  thine 
janointed."    (Hab.  3  :  13.) 

The  Jews  were  a  chosen  people,  set  apart  for 
a  special  function  among  the  nations  of  the 
earth — in  short  a  messianic  nation. 

Think  for  a  moment  of  that  splendid  con- 
ception of  theirs.  Other  ancient  nations 
thought  of  nothing  but  living  for  themselves 
and  that  all  outside  were  important  only  as 
tributary  to  them.  The  Jews  had  that  feeling 
in  common  with  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  It 
was,  and  is  to  this  day,  ingrained  with  them. 
But  in  spite  of  that  inveterate  feeling,  they 
kept  rising  out  of  it — clear  out  of  themselves. 

Invisible  forces  at  play  underneath  the  com- 
mon crust  of  national  conceit  kept  throwing 
up  mountain  peaks  of  world-wide  vision.  The 
Bible  is  an  Andean  range  of  such  peaks.   They 


International  Ideals  18 

glitter  in  the  sunlight  along  every  period  of 
Jewish  history,  patriarchal  epoch,  legislative 
epoch,  imperial  epoch,  international  epoch. 
Take  even  the  most  primitive,  pre-tribal  period 
when  there  was  nothing  yet  but  a  wandering 
Bedouin  family,  "  In  thee  shall  all  the  fam- 
ilies of  the  earth  be  blessed."  That  is  not  an 
incidental  phrase.  It  is  the  vital  part  of  the 
story.  It  is  the  very  climax  of  God's  original 
call  of  Abram.  It  is  repeated  again  and  again 
and  yet  again.  It  is  a  pivotal  idea  on  which  the 
history  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob  turned. 
Their  commission  was  world-wide. 

This  conception  of  the  international  meaning 
of  Jewish  history  keeps  emerging  all  the  way 
along  from  the  story  of  the  patriarchs  to  the 
apocalypse  of  John.  There  are  surprising 
traces  of  it  in  the  legislative  epochs.  In  the 
imperial  epoch  it  rose  in  splendor.  In  Messi- 
anic psalms  there  are  matchless  strains  of  inter- 
national anthem. 

The  conception  naturally  reached  its  greatest 
clearness  in  the  distinctively  international 
epochs  of  Jewish  history  when  Israel  was  being 
thrown  like  a  shuttle  back  and  forth  among 
the  great  nations  of  antiquity,  weaving  in  the 
thread  of  a  universal  purpose.  It  is  the  over- 
mastering thought  of  that  mighty  prophecy  of 


14  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

The  Exile,  the  second  part  of  the  book  of 
Isaiah. 

"  It  is  too  light  a  thing  that  thou  shouldst 
be  my  servant  to  raise  up  the  tribes  of  Jacob 
and  to  restore  the  preserved  of  Israel:  I  will 
also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  the  Gentiles,  that 
thou  mayst  be  my  salvation  unto  the  end  of 
the  earth."  "  And  nations  shall  come  to  thy 
light  and  kings  to  the  brightness  of  thy  rising." 
It  was  too  light  a  thing  for  Isaiah,  a  too  trivial 
thought,  that  the  nation  was  merely  for  its 
own  sake.    It  was  for  the  sake  of  all  nations. 

This  messianic  conception  is  the  true  miracle 
of  the  Bible.  Other  miracles  are  paltry  com- 
pared with  it.  Take  the  book  of  Jonah.  It  is 
childish  to  stop  at  the  fish  story.  The  one 
stupendous  miracle  of  that  book  is  the  one 
which  it  was  written  on  purpose  to  tell,  the 
miracle  of  salvation  brought  by  a  reluctant  Jew 
to  a  great,  hostile,  heathen  nation. 

So  the  Jews,  in  spite  of  extreme  tendencies 
to  narrowness  and  provincialism,  rose  to  lofty 
visions  of  a  universal  mission. 

Now  how  about  our  own  nation?  We  com- 
monly think  of  its  forefathers  as  being  driven 
hither  by  persecution  and  as,  both  by  inherit- 
ance and  by  bitter  experience,  having  as  much 
justification  as  people  ever  could  have  for  nar- 


International  Ideals  15 

row  and  exclusive  conceptions.  At  the  very 
outset,,  however,  they  conceived  of  their  under- 
taking as  a  messianic  enterprise. 

William  Penn  in  1681,  the  Charter  of 
Pennsylvania  having  just  been  granted  him, 
wrote   to    friends    these    remarkable    words : 

"  Because  I  have  been  somewhat  exercised 
at  times  about  the  nature  and  end  of  govern- 
ment among  men,  it  is  reasonable  to  expect  that 
I  should  endeavor  to  establish  a  just  and  right- 
eous one  in  this  province,  that  others  may  take 
example  by  it — truly  this  my  heart's  desire. 
For  the  nations  want  a  precedent.  ...  I  do, 
therefore,  desire  the  Lord's  wisdom  to  guide 
me  and  those  that  may  be  concerned  with  me 
that  we  may  do  the  thing  that  is  truly  wise  and 
just." 

This  was  the  dominant  thought  in  Penn's 
mind.  To  another  correspondent  he  expressed 
it  this  way :  "  For  my  country,  I  eyed  the  Lord 
in  obtaining  it  and  more  was  I  drawn  inward 
to  look  to  him  and  to  owe  it  to  his  hand  and 
power  than  to  any  other  way.  I  have  so 
obtained  it  and  desire  to  keep  it  that  I  may 
not  be  unworthy  of  his  love  but  do  that  which 
may  answer  his  kind  providence  and  serve  his 
truth  and  people  that  an  example  may  be  set 


16  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

up  to  the  nations.  There  may  be  room  there, 
though  not  here,  for  such  an  holy  experiment." 

You  find  it  exphcitly  declared,  not  only  in 
the  utterances  of  the  religious  leaders  but  also 
in  the  state  documents  of  the  first  generation 
of  English  Colonists,  as  for  example  the  char- 
ter of  Massachusetts  granted  by  Charles  I 
in  1629.  It  was  declared  that  bringing  the 
native  inhabitants  of  the  new  world  into  the 
realm  of  the  Messiah  is  "  the  principale  ende 
of  this  plantacon." 

It  is  not  wanting  in  the  earliest  of  them  all, 
the  Virginia  Charter  of  1609  and  the  New 
England  Patent  of  1620.  Precisely  the  same 
statement  is  made  in  them  both ;  "  The  princi- 
pal effect  which  we  can  desire  or  expect  of  this 
action  is  the  conversion  of  the  people  in  those 
parts  into  the  true  worship  of  God  and  Chris- 
tian religion."  The  redemption  of  the  strange 
race  of  men  inhabiting  the  new  continent  was 
"  the  principal  effect  "  desired.  The  American 
colonists  may  have  fallen  from  such  ideals  as 
frequently  and  as  far  as  did  the  Israelites  of 
old,  but  they  had  them.  Our  nation  was  cra- 
dled in  messianic  feeling. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  significant  facts  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race  to  which  attention 
never  has  been  duly  directed  that  the  first  gov- 


International  Ideals  17 

emment  completely  democratic  on  the  planet 
and  the  endeavor  to  evangelize  the  occupants 
of  one  of  its  hemispheres  were  born  at  the 
same  time,  conceived  in  the  same  cultivated 
brain,  engendered  by  the  same  throbbing  heart. 
The  brain  had  been  developed  in  the  ancient 
seat  of  Anglo-Saxon  liberal  culture — Cam- 
bridge, England.  The  heart  was  a  glowing 
Keltic  heart.  Prof.  Sellinek  of  Heidelberg, 
has  recently  affirmed  what  Gervinus  the  Ger- 
man political  historian  long  ago  pointed  out 
and  all  scholarly  students  sufficiently  detached 
to  be  impartial  say,  that  the  first  embodiment 
on  earth  of  complete  democracy  and  the  orig- 
inal from  which  it  is  now  spreading  through- 
out the  world  was  the  colony  founded  by  Roger 
Williams.  But  Roger  Williams  was  also  the 
first  apostle  of  the  English-speaking  race  to  the 
pagan  races  of  America.  For  more  than  forty 
years  their  evangelization  was  his  chief  occu- 
pation. He  was  banished  from  Massachusetts 
more  because  of  his  stout  defense  of  the  rights 
of  the  Aborigines  against  greedy  encroach- 
ment than  because  of  theological  differences. 
Later  he  was  the  only  competent  interpreter 
as  well  as  peacemaker  between  Massachusetts 
and  the  outraged  Indians.     To  them  the  last 


18  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

years  of  his  life,  as  well  as  the  first  in  America, 
were  lovingly  devoted. 

Thus  complete  democracy  and  Christian 
missions  in  our  country  were  twin-born. 

By  the  time  our  nation  had  grown  to  inde- 
pendent manhood,  the  messianic  conception 
had  taken  on  new  forms  and  developed  world- 
wide scope.  At  the  laying  of  the  corner  stone 
of  the  Bunker  Hill  monument,  Daniel  Webster 
said: 

"  Our  history  hitherto  proves  that  the  pop- 
ular form  of  government  is  practicable,  and 
that  with  wisdom  and  knowledge  men  may 
govern  themselves ;  and  the  duty  incumbent  on 
us  is,  to  preserve  the  consistency  of  this  cheer- 
ing example,  and  take  care  that  nothing  may 
weaken  its  authority  with  the  world.  If,  in  our 
case,  the  representative  system  ultimately  fail, 
popular  governments  must  be  pronounced  im- 
possible. No  combination  of  circumstances 
more  favorable  to  the  experiment  can  ever  be 
expected  to  occur.  The  last  hope  of  mankind 
therefore  rests  with  us." 

Other  nations  early  discovered  that  our 
country  was  the  seed-plot  of  freedom  for  the 
old  world  as  well  as  the  new.  One  hundred 
and  twenty-five  years  ago  the  Emperor  of  Aus- 
tria wrote  to  his  minister  in  the  Netherlands, 


International  Ideals  19 

"  France,  by  the  assistance  which  she  afforded 
to  the  Americans,  gave  birth  to  reflections  on 
freedom."  He  was  quite  right.  The  French 
Revohition  followed  ours.  Frenchmen  regard 
their  "  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man," 
made  in  1789,  as  the  greatest  gift  that  France 
has  made  to  mankind.  A  European  Doctor  of 
Laws  has  recently  published  a  book  showing 
paragraph  by  paragraph  in  parallel  columns 
that  the  French  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of 
Man  was  taken  from  similar  declarations  pre- 
viously made  and  published  abroad  by  five  or 
six  of  our  American  Colonies. 

A  few  years  ago  the  English  founder  of  the 
Review  of  Reviews,  William  T.  Stead,  pub- 
lished a  volume  entitled  "  The  Americanization 
of  the  World." 

The  most  eminent  English  statesman  of 
recent  times,  William  E.  Gladstone,  who  was 
not  over- fond  of  America,  frankly  said: 
"  America  will  probably  become  what  we 
(England)  are  now,  the  head  servant  in  the 
great  household  of  the  world,  the  employer  of 
all  employed;  because  her  service  will  be  the 
most  and  ablest.  We  have  no  more  title 
against  her  than  Venice,  or  Genoa  or  Holland 
had  against  us." 

Mr.  Bryce,  the  English  Ambassador  to  the 


20  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

United  States  has  well  said  of  the  principles  of 
our  nation  that  "  they  are  believed  to  disclose 
and  display  the  type  of  institutions  toward 
which,  as  by  a  law  of  fate,  the  rest  of  civilized 
iYiankind  are  forced  to  move,  some  with 
swifter,  others  with  slower,  but  all  with  unrest- 
ing feet." 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  national  conceit,  it  is 
a  mere  fact  of  history  that  our  form  of  govern- 
ment has  been  a  model,  at  least  has  been  eagerly 
studied,  not  only  by  the  twenty-one  American 
Republics,  but  also  by  the  constitution  makers 
of  France,  Germany,  Switzerland,  Australia, 
South  Africa,  Japan,  and  now  at  last  by  the 
great  embodiment  of  old  world  stolidity, 
China. 

The  so-called  Monroe  Doctrine  is  one  ex- 
pression of  our  conviction  that  we  have  a  mes- 
sianic function.  In  the  days  immediately 
before  us,  the  days  of  the  Panama  Canal,  that 
old  doctrine,  ninety-year-old  doctrine,  is  com- 
ing to  new,  most  critical  application.  In  the 
direction  of  Europe,  too,  our  messianic  func- 
tion has  new  and  portentous  bearings. 

The  report  of  a  special  investigation  made  by 
the  Italian  Government  declares  that  the  mil- 
lions of  American  dollars  are  of  small  value 


International  Ideals  21 

compared  with  the  American  spirit  brought  to 
Italy  by  returning  emigrants. 

Prof.  Steiner  in  his  fascinating  books  has 
shown  how  other  portions  of  southern  Europe 
are  being  transformed  in  the  same  way. 

At  the  Queen's  Jubilee  in  1897  the  Colonial 
Premiers  of  the  British  Empire  were  most 
loyal  to  the  Queen,  but  the  special  representa- 
tive of  the  United  States  at  the  celebration, 
Whitelaw  Reid,  after  watching  them  closely 
and  talking  with  them  freely,  declared  that 
they  were  all  "  downright  Yankees." 

"  I  mean  that  these  men  are  not  in  the  least 
like  British  Ministers  or  any  of  your  English 
politicians.  Their  point  of  view  is  American. 
Their  political  ideas  are  the  same  as  ours. 
They  are  loyal  to  the  Queen,  no  doubt,  but  that 
is  a  thing  apart.  In  their  work-a-day  politics 
they  are  as  Republican  as  ourselves.  They 
start  from  the  same  principles,  they  reason  in 
the  same  way,  and  they  arrive  at  the  same  con- 
clusions. Not  one  of  them  would  tolerate  a 
House  of  Lords  in  his  own  colony,  or  an  estab- 
lished Church.  Even  on  Free  Trade  their 
ideas  are  more  American  than  British.  In 
talking  to  them  I  am  never  conscious  of  that 
break  of  gauge  which  I  constantly  feel  in  talk- 
ing to  a  British  statesman." 


22  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

It  is  ours  to  give  the  light  of  liberty,  not 
only  to  the  other  nations  on  our  own  side  of 
the  globe  and  to  Europe,  which  is  our  father- 
land, but  also  to  Africa,  and  just  now  increas- 
ingly to  the  vast  continent  of  Asia. 

It  was  in  1852  that  Senator  Seward,  who 
afterward  became  the  great  Secretary  of  State 
under  Abraham  Lincoln,  uttered  a  forecast 
concerning  the  messianic  destiny  of  our  nation 
in  relation  to  the  nations  of  Asia,  which  now 
after  sixty  years  we  see,  was  nothing  less  than 
true  prophecy. 

"  Even  the  discovery  of  this  continent  and 
its  islands,  and  the  organization  of  society  and 
government  upon  them,  grand  and  important 
as  those  events  have  been,  were  but  conditional, 
preliminary,  and  ancillary  to  the  more  sublime 
result,  now  in  the  act  of  consummation — the 
reunion  of  the  two  civilizations,  which,  having 
parted  on  the  plains  of  Asia  four  thousand 
years  ago,  and  having  traveled  ever  afterward 
in  opposite  directions  around  the  world,  now 
meet  again  on  the  coasts  and  islands  of  the 
Pacific  ocean.  Certainly  no  mere  human  event 
of  equal  dignity  and  importance  has  ever 
occurred  upon  the  earth.  It  will  be  followed 
by  the  equalization  of  the  conditions  of  society 


International  Ideals  23 

and  the  restoration  of  the  unity  of  the  human 
family." 

"  AS  to  those  who  cannot  see  how  this  move- 
ment will  improve  the  condition  of  Asia,  I 
leave  them  to  reflect  upon  the  improvements 
in  the  condition  of  Europe  since  the  discovery 
and  colonization  of  America.  Who  does  not 
see,  then,  that  every  year,  hereafter,  European 
commerce,  European  thoughts  and  European 
activity,  although  actually  gaining  greater 
force,  and  European  connections,  although 
actually  becoming  more  intimate,  will,  never- 
theless, ultimately  sink  in  importance;  while 
the  Pacific  ocean,  its  shores,  its  islands,  and  the 
vast  regions  beyond,  will  become  the  chief 
theater  of  events  in  the  world's  great  Here- 
after." 

Put  along  side  this  messianic  prophecy  con- 
cerning our  relation  to  Asia  the  words  of 
Asiatics  themselves  in  February,  1912.  A 
committee  of  Chinese,  representing,  as  it 
affirmed,  900  Chinese  students  in  the  United 
States,  addressed  a  petition  to  President  Taft 
urging  "  Your  Excellency's  immediate  recog- 
nition of  the  first  republic  in  Asia — the  new 
government  of  China."  They  say  that  "the 
government  of  the  United  States  has  success- 
fully preserved  in  the  past  its  noble  and  unpar- 


24  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

alleled  tradition  of  being  always  the  first  to 
welcome  into  the  family  of  nations  the  various 
republics  established  one  after  another  in  the 
different  parts  of  the  world." 

"  In  effecting  the  remarkable  transition  of 
China  from  a  corrupt  monarchy  to  a  sound 
republic,  many  of  the  most  prominent  leaders 
have  been  guided  by  the  practical  knowledge 
and  experience  of  the  blessings  of  free  gov- 
ernment which  the  hospitality  and  generosity 
of  this  land  of  liberty  have  enabled  them,  in 
their  student  days,  to  acquire  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  its  institutions  of  learning;  and  all  of 
them  have  been  inspired  by  the  luminous  ser- 
vice which  the  people  of  the  United  States  have 
rendered  to  the  cause  of  republican  China.  We 
avail  ourselves  of  this  opportunity  to  own  our 
debt  of  gratitude." 

In  rapid  outline,  having  brought  ourselves 
face  to  face  with  the  messianic  ideal  of  the 
Jews  and  the  messianic  call  to  America,  we  are 
confronted  by  the  most  stupendous  and  awful 
questions  which  any  nation  has  faced  since  the 
Jews  rejected  the  world's  Messiah,  who  was 
at  the  same  time  their  own  Messiah. 

When  the  "  hour  of  visitation  "  came  for 
which  the  long  centuries  had  been  laboring, 
Israel  missed  the  supreme  opportunity.    That 


International  Ideals  25 

failure  is  the  tragic  scandal  of  the  ages.  One 
Son  of  Israel,  though  of  god-like  composure, 
wept  when  he  saw  it  impending. 

In  the  counsels  of  infinite  Love  the  world 
was  not  deprived  of  a  Redeemer,  but  the 
messianic  nation  was  wrecked — frightfully 
wrecked — becoming  thenceforth  driftwood  on 
the  shores  of  time. 

I,  for  one,  have  little  patience  with  native 
Americans  who  denature  themselves  by  living 
in  Europe  for  years  out  of  preference  and  then 
come  home  to  write  petulent,  almost  hysterical 
books  about  the  disappearance  of  true  Amer- 
icans. Still,  there  would  be  no  sting  in  what 
they  say  if  there  were  not  some  terrible  truth 
in  it. 

One  needs  to  take  no  expatriated  point  of 
view  but  only  to  look  with  clear  vision  of  patri- 
otic sanity  in  order  to  see  possible  perils  loom- 
ing high  above  the  horizon. 

The  real  perils  of  America,  like  those  of  old 
Judea,  are  not  external  invasions  from  Italy 
or  anywhere,  but  internal  failure  to  see  that 
the  strenuous  hour  of  American  life  has  come, 
when  we  ourselves  determine  whether  our 
nation  is  to  rise  to  its  sublime  messianic 
opportunity  or  is  to  miss  the  decisive  moment 


26  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

through  the  blindness  of  Pharisaic  tradition 
and  Sadducean  self-complacency. 

What  fates  have  guaranteed  that  while 
Rome  could  rise  and  fail,  Egypt  could  rise 
and  fail.  Babylonia  could  rise  and  fail,  Assyria 
could  rise  and  fail,  yea,  even  Israel,  the  chosen, 
called  and  favored  of  Heaven  could  rise  and 
fail  most  desperately  of  all,  America,  the 
chosen  nation  of  the  New  World,  can  only 
rise,  and  rise,  but  cannot  fail? 

Heredity  can  not  guarantee  it.  We,  too,  are 
the  children  of  the  same  old  human  family. 

Environment  can  not  guarantee  it.  The 
wide  open  spaces  which  have  heretofore  been 
our  insurance  are  now  swiftly  closing  in  with 
struggling  humanity. 

When  all  the  accumulated  achievements  of 
modern  science  and  invention  commanded  by 
all  the  force  of  modern  aggregation  of  capital 
have  constructed  the  completest  embodiment 
of  human  progress  and  fitly  named  it  the 
Titanic,  it  may  crumple  in  an  instant  and  crum- 
ble at  the  touch  of  silent  cosmic  energy. 
Early  in  our  boasted  twentieth  century,  when 
we  thought  that  we  had  organized  the  forces 
of  nature  and  maneuvered  them  beyond  the 
possibility  of  such  perils  as  had  wrecked  the 
less  developed  civilizations  of  the  past,  we  are 


International  Ideals  27 

forced  to  exclaim  with  deeper  meaning  than 
ever  before, 

"Thou,  too,  sail  on,  O  Ship  of  State! 
Sail  on,  O  union,  strong  and  great! 
Humanity  with  all  its  fears, 
With  all  the  hopes  of  future  years 
Is  hanging  breathless  on  thy  fate ! " 

The  time  has  come  for  all  Americans  to  seek 
the  substance  of  national  stability  in  something 
deeper  than  material  achievements,  in  forces 
finer  than  mere  economic  factors.  Power  to 
withstand  all  possible  shocks  in  the  drift  of 
time  and  to  override  all  obstructions,  however 
solid  or  hidden,  is  to  be  found  only  in  forces 
which  are  eternal,  spiritual. 

Nothing  but  an  open  mind  to  see  the  new 
necessities,  and  an  alert  will  to  sacrifice  in 
meeting  them  can  insure  for  a  second  century 
our  messianic  Republic.  It  will  not  do  to  prate 
about  "  manifest  destiny."  The  most  "  elect 
race  "  that  ever  lived  fumbled  its  destiny.  So 
can  we.    But  we  must  not.    Nay,  we  will  not 

"Land  that  we  love!     Thou  Future  of  the 
World! 

Keep  thou  thy  starry  forehead  as  the  dome 


28  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

All  white,  and  to  the  eternal  Dawn  inclined ! 
Thou  art  not  for  thyself,  but  for  mankind, 
And  to  despair  of  thee  were  to  despair 
Of  man,  of  man's  high  destiny,  of  God! 

To  despair  of  thee!   Ah,  no! 
For  thou  thyself  art  Hope;  Hope  of  the  World 
thou  art !  " 

— "The  Great  Remembrance,"  R.  W.  Gilder. 


II 

Ethnic  Migrations 

HUMANITY  is  being  possessed,  in- 
formed, inspired  by  the  life  of  God. 
"  The  life  of  the  ages," — as  a  recent 
admirable  translation  of  the  New  Testament 
renders  the  phrase  "  eternal  life,"  that  epitome 
of  the  gospel  according  to  John, — this  life  of 
the  ages  is  coming  into  the  fleeting  lives  of  men 
more  and  more.  The  most  important  discov- 
ery that  we  can  make  is  as  to  the  way  in  which 
the  life  of  God  comes  most  naturally,  freely, 
effectively,  into  human  life. 

Under  what  circumstances  does  the  life  of 
the  ages  flow  surely,  abidingly,  into  the  life  of 
humanity?  Call  it  springtime.  The  sap  is 
running  up  out  of  the  ground,  the  leaves  are 
budding  and  bursting  forth.  Where  is  the 
actual  tract  of  augmenting  life  in  the  tree? 
It  has,  it  ever  has  had,  but  one  such  area, 
whether  it  be  ten  years  old  or  a  hundred  or  a 
29 


30  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

thousand.  However  small  or  great  the  tree 
may  be,  it  is  not  growing  throughout  the  entire 
mass.  The  bulk  of  the  wood  is  not  changing, 
the  bark  is  not  alive,  but  there  is  between  the 
bark  and  the  trunk  a  thin  zone  around  the  tree, 
where  all  the  sap  flows.  The  cosmic  life  out 
of  earth  and  air  goes  into  the  tree  along  that 
zone.  Those  who  know  this  part  of  God's 
work  best,  tell  us  that  the  bulk  of  the  tree  does 
not  come  out  of  the  ground  but  out  of  the  sky. 
You  take  one  of  those  great  trees  in  California, 
standing  so  many  hundreds  of  feet  high  with 
its  vast  bulk.  It  has  come  out  of  the  unseen, 
it  has  been  accumulated  there  out  of  the  invis- 
ible atmosphere.  That  is  the  way  of  God,  the 
things  which  are  seen  come  out  of  the  things 
which  are  not  seen.  All  of  the  play  of  life  up 
and  down  and  around  a  tree,  expanding  it  year 
by  year,  ring  by  ring,  century  by  century,  all  of 
it  comes  in  the  zone  of  vital  activity,  the  one 
layer  which  pulsates  with  plastic  forces. 

What  is  the  zone  of  the  accession  of  God's 
life  in  humanity?  Where  does  the  life  of  the 
ages  pour  itself  into  the  life  of  the  centuries? 
It  is  in  the  zone  of  migration.  It  is  where 
humanity  is  moving  from  one  place  of  abode 
to  another. 

Look  at  some  of  the  outstanding  moments 


Ethnic  Migrations  31 


'e> 


in  the  spiritual  development  of  mankind. 
Abraham  is  called  as  the  Father  of  the  Faith- 
ful. Not  only  Christians  and  Jews  regard  him 
in  that  way,  but  Mohammedans  as  well.  Three 
of  the  great  world  religions  look  back  to 
Abraham  as  their  progenitor.  The  life  of  God 
came  into  the  human  race  through  him  in  a 
most  original  and  originative  way. 

"  Now,  Jehovah  said  unto  Abraham,  get 
thee  out  of  thy  country,  and  from  thy  kindred, 
and  from  thy  father's  house,  unto  the  land 
which  I  will  shew  thee."  God  spoke  to  him 
and  started  him  on  his  career  as  an  originator 
of  increased  spiritual  life  in  mankind  by  send- 
ing him  from  one  country  to  another,  telling 
him  to  go  West.  So  he  moved  from  Mesopo- 
tamia over  into  the  Promised  Land.  Wherever 
he  went,  Schechem  and  Bethel  and  Hebron,  he 
put  up  an  altar,  a  place  of  communion  with 
the  invisible  God.  The  story  of  Abraham  is 
the  story  of  the  first  great  accession  of  spiritual 
life  to  the  human  race,  and  it  came  explicitly 
in  connection  with  his  migration  from  one  land 
into  another  land. 

That  first  instance  is  typical  of  the  whole 
career  of  the  spiritual  development  of  the 
human  race.  Take  the  next — we  can  speak  only 
of  a  few  instances,  touching  on  some  of  the 


32  Elemental  Forces  In  Home  Missions 

mountain  peaks  of  the  long  chain  of  human 
history, — take  the  next  great  advance  of 
humanit}^  in  its  relation  to  God.  Under  what 
circumstances  did  the  Almighty  speak  to  men 
afresh,  so  that  they  heard,  so  that  the  sound  of 
His  voice  has  gone  ringing  down  the  centuries, 
to  the  present  hour?  When  was  it  that  the 
law  of  God  in  the  Ten  Words,  as  they  are 
called,  was  promulgated?  It  was  when  the 
people  were  migrating  from  Egypt  to  Pales- 
tine. It  was  during  that  forty  years  of  mi- 
gration that  the  great  increase  of  divine  revela- 
tion came. 

Take  the  highest  attainment  in  the  spiritual 
life  that  they  ever  made  before  Christ  came. 
Under  what  circumstances  did  they  make  it? 
When  did  the  great  seers  see  and  speak, — 
those  mighty  speakers  for  God,  whom  we  call 
the  prophets?  Every  student  of  the  Bible 
knows  that  the  greatest  of  them,  whose  words 
have  had  the  highest  influence  ever  since,  spoke 
in  connection  with  what  is  technically  called 
"The  Exile"  and  "The  Return."  It  was 
when  the  people  were  taken  away  from  one 
land  over  into  a  new  land,  lived  there  long 
enough  to  have  a  new  life  in  the  new  surround- 
ings and  then,  some  of  them,  were  brought 
back  into  the  old  land  again.     It  was  in  con- 


Ethnic  Migrations  83 


^fc> 


nection  with  those  migrations  of  the  people, 
that  the  greatest  utterances  of  God  to  them 
and  through  them  came. 

When  you  come  on  down  to  the  supreme 
revelation  of  God  to  men,  you  find  that  it  is 
when  the  Son  of  God  moved  from  heaven  into 
the  earth,  came  from  the  invisible  world,  and 
pitched  his  tent, — as  one  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment writers  put  it, — here  in  this  land  where 
we  live, — "  tabernacled  among  us,"  that  the 
great  accession  of  the  life  of  God  to  humanity 
took  place. 

How  will  it  be  in  the  future  ?  We  know  ex- 
ceedingly little  about  the  world  to  come.  It 
is  best  to  dogmatize  about  it  very  little  indeed ; 
but  our  strongest  conviction  concerning  the 
future,  our  one  clear  hope,  is  that,  when  we 
pass  out  of  this  world  into  the  other  world, 
there  will  be  such  an  accession  of  spiritual  life, 
such  an  augmentation  of  the  life  of  God  in  our 
lives,  as  we  never  have  seen  or  even  been  able 
to  imagine  before. 

Such  is  the  story,  the  spiritual  history  of 
humanity,  as  it  appears  in  the  literature  which 
sets  forth  the  highest  aspirations  of  the  human 
race.  If  you  look  abroad  in  a  wider  way,  you 
find  the  same  thing.  The  advances  of  the 
human  race  into  a  higher  life  have  been  in  con- 


34  Elemental  Forces  in  Hom6  Mission 

nection  with  their  migrations  from  one  place  to 
another.  Wave  after  wave  of  humanity  moved 
out  of  the  original  home  of  the  human  family, 
starting  out  of  the  steppes  of  Central  Asia, 
driven  over  Europe,  first  the  Kelts,  then  the 
Teutons  and  behind  them  the  Slavs.  The 
whole  development  of  mankind  has  been  con- 
nected with  these  mighty  racial  migrations.  If 
the  original  human  family  had  stopped  where 
it  started,  you  and  I  would  not  be  living  here 
to-day.  Neither  would  we  be  civilized, — as  we 
flatter  ourselves  we  are  now.  We  should  be 
somewhere  back  in  Central  Asia,  living  in  a 
hut  instead  of  a  house,  with  no  tools,  except 
some  branch  wrenched  off  a  tree  as  a  club, 
with  no  language  except  inarticulate  cries.  The 
advancement  of  the  human  family  has  been 
connected  very  closely,  intimately,  inevitably 
connected  with  the  movement  of  the  human 
race  from  one  place  to  another  on  the  face  of 
the  earth. 

We  think,  fondly  think,  that  the  English  race 
is  the  great  dominant  race  of  the  earth.  How 
did  it  become  the  foremost  people  ?  There  were 
in  Great  Britain  the  Kelts.  Then  by  the  suc- 
ceeding waves  of  migration  they  were  crowded 
into  the  north  and  west  and  into  the  mountains, 
into  Ireland,   into  .Wales   and   Scotland,   the 


Ethnic  Migrations  35 

Teutonic  peoples  occupying  the  other  portions 
of  Great  Britain.  Hengist  and  Horsa,  landed 
on  the  shores  of  Britain,  and  changed  the 
course  of  the  human  history,  those  old  Anglo- 
Saxon  forefathers  of  ours.  After  them  came 
the  Danes ;  later  on,  a  great  influx  of  Normans, 
Scandinavians  who  had  migrated  out  of  Scan- 
dinavia down  into  France,  where  they  came 
in  contact  with  the  remains  of  the  old  civil- 
ization of  Rome  and  France,  and  were  partly 
civilized,  and  then  came  over  into  Britain  and 
took  possession  of  that  island.  The  vast  ener- 
gies of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  its  dom- 
inance on  the  face  of  the  earth  at  the  present 
time,  are  because  it  is  the  strong,  joint  off- 
spring of  mighty  migrations.  A  spring-tide  of 
Anglo-Saxon  migration  reached  the  shores  of 
North  America  three  hundred  years  ago. 

We  are  today  confronted  by  a  much  vaster 
migration.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  tremen- 
dous and  an  unparalleled  movement  of  human- 
ity into  a  new  world.  The  migrations  of  the 
past,  including  the  migrations  of  the  children 
of  Israel  and  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, — all 
these  are  but  preliminary  and  small,  as  com- 
pared with  the  vast  current  migrations  of  the 
human  race  into  this  great  western  hemisphere 
of  ours,  especially  into  our  own  country.     It 


36  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

has  become  a  familiar  fact  that  there  are  more 
Jews  in  New  York  City  than  are  to  be  found 
in  any  other  place  on  earth,  more  even  than 
ever  lived  in  one  place,  not  excepting  Jerusa- 
lem itself.  It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  there  are 
more  Italians  in  New  York  than  anywhere 
else  on  the  earth,  except  in  Rome. 

And  so  on,  with  others,  people  after  people, 
there  are  more  of  them  gathered  together  here 
than  are  collected  anywhere  else  on  the  earth, 
in  many  cases,  and  in  a  large  number  of  other 
cases,  more  than  anywhere  else  except  in  the 
very  capitals  of  their  own  countries.  Out  of 
every  hundred  people  in  Manhattan,  86  are  of 
foreign  parentage,  and  49  were  themselves 
born  abroad.  In  Lawrence,  Mass.,  it  is  said 
that  sixty  men  before  one  row  of  looms  could 
not  understand  one  another's  language.  Sim- 
ilar conditions  are  reported  as  to  iron  workers 
in  Pueblo,  Colorado.  All  the  way  from  Boston 
to  San  Francisco,  even  through  many  of  the 
rural  regions,  we  are  a  nation  of  newcomers. 
So  that  we  live  in  the  midst  of  a  movement  in 
the  history  of  humanity  like  that  when  the 
spiritual  growth  of  the  human  race  received 
its  first  mighty  impulse,  God  saying  to  the 
Father  of  the  Faithful,  the  progenitor  of  the 
spiritual  life  of  humanity,  "  Get  thee  out  of 


Ethnic  Migrations  37 

thy  country,  and  from  thy  kindred,  and  from 
thy  father's  house,  into  the  land  that  I  will 
shew  thee."  That  little  migration  of  Abraham 
and  his  family  was  hardly  worth  noticing,  so 
minute  was  it  in  its  nature  as  compared  with 
this  vast  world-wide  movement  of  the  human 
family  at  the  present  moment.  And  the  place 
into  which  it  is  moving,  as  into  no  other,  is 
our  own  land.  If  it  would  have  been  great  to 
have  stood  beside  Abraham  when  God  told 
him  to  migrate  from  one  country  to  another, 
that  he  might  become  the  Father  of  the  Faith- 
ful, a  great  nation,  and  not  only  that  but  a 
blessing  to  all  other  nations, — if  that  would 
have  been  great  cosmic  experience,  it  is 
infinitely  greater  to  be  right  where  we  are  at 
the  present  time;  for  God  himself  is  bringing 
to  pass  mightier  accessions  of  the  life  of  the 
ages  in  the  life  of  humanity  here  and  now, 
than  ever  anywhere  else  on  this  planet. 

There  are  two  ways  of  taking  these  porten- 
tous events:  the  way  of  fear  and  the  way  of 
faith.  We  are  easily  frightened  at  the  number 
coming  now.  We  all  came  a  few  generations 
ago,  at  earliest.  Some  of  us  are  very  proud 
of  the  line  that  we  can  trace  back  to,  say,  1640, 
or  possibly  as  far  back  as  1620.  That,  however, 
is  a  short  time  in  the  long  history  of  humanity. 


38  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

But  I  am  speaking  now  of  those  who  were 
born  on  the  other  side  of  the  sea,  and  have 
themselves  come  over,  not  their  grandfathers 
or  their  great  grandfathers,  but  themselves. 
There  are  enough  of  these  in  the  United  States 
at  the  present  moment  to  displace  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  nineteen  whole  states  of 
this  country.  If  they  were  distributed  in  that 
way,  were  all  in  those  nineteen  states,  they 
could  elect  thirty-eight  of  the  United  States 
Senators. 

It  is  easy  to  be  alarmed  when  we  realize  this. 
It  is  not  simply  because  of  the  multitudes  who 
are  here  now,  but  in  view  of  the  multitudes 
who  are  coming  every  hour,  every  minute, — 
two  every  minute  landing  on  our  shores.  This 
has  been  going  on  for  the  last  ten  years, — on 
the  average  two  a  minute,  whether  we  wake  or 
sleep,  whether  we  pray  or  play  golf.  Two 
every  minute,  year  in  and  year  out,  landing 
here  from  the  other  side  of  the  globe ! 

This  is  the  mightiest  moment  of  human 
migration  that  the  long  ages  ever  have  known. 
Some  are  alarmed.    They  feel  like  saying: 

"Wide  open  and  unguarded  stand  our  gates. 
And    through    them   presses    a    wild    motley 
throng; 


Ethnic  Migrations  39 

Men  from  the  Volga  and  Tartar  steppes, 
Malayan,  Scythian,  Teuton,  Celt  and  Slav, 
Featureless  figures  of  the  Hoang-Ho, 
Flying  the  Old  World's  poverty  and  scorn ; 
These  bringing  with  them  unknown  gods  and 

rites, 
Those,  tiger  passions,   here  to   stretch  their 

claws. 
In  street  and  alley  what  strange  tongues  are 

loud. 
Accents  of  menace  alien  to  our  air. 
Voices  that  once  the  Tower  of  Babel  knew!  " 

But,  we  may  take  a  more  Christian  attitude. 
We  may  recognize  the  fact  that  God  himself 
comes  into  human  life,  that  His  spiritual  force 
streams  into  the  tides  of  humanity  in  infinite 
blessing,  chiefly  through  all  the  ages  in  con- 
nection with  the  migrations  of  men.  So,  we 
may  rejoice  that  we  live  at  such  a  moment  as 
this  in  human  history. 

We  may  say  with  another  poet: 

"  Countrymen,  bend  and  invoke 

Mercy  for  us  blasphemers, 

For  that  we  spat  on  these  marvelous  folk, 

Nations  of  darers  and  dreamers. 

Scions  of  singers  and  seers, 

Our  peers,  and  more  than  our  peers, 

"  Rabble  and  refuse,"  we  name  them 


40  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

And  "  scum  o'  the  earth,"  to  shame  them. 
Mercy  for  us  of  the  few,  young  years. 
Of  the  culture  so  callow  and  crude, 
Of  the  hands  so  grasping  and  rude, 
The  lips  so  ready  for  sneers. 
At  the  sons  of  our  ancient  more-than-peers. 
Mercy  for  us  who  dare  despise 
Men  in  whose  loins  our  Homer  lies; 
Mothers  of  men  who  shall  bring  to  us 
The  glory  of  Titian,  the  grandeur  of  Huss; 
Children  in  whose  frail  arms  shall  rest 
Prophets  and  singers  and  saints  of  the  West." 

That  is  the  Christian  way  in  which  to  look 
at  this  mighty  inundation  of  our  continent  with 
peoples  of  every  tribe  and  tongue  and  nation 
on  the  earth. 

Corinthian  bronze  was  more  costly  than 
gold.  It  was  so  precious  because  it  was  an 
amalgam  out  of  the  choicest  ores.  Tradition 
had  it  that  it  was  discovered  when  a  great  fire 
in  Corinth  accidentally  melted  together  a  num- 
ber of  precious  metals.  The  American  "  melt- 
ing pot "  is  more  than  an  accident,  it  is  the 
plan  of  the  God  of  Abraham  for  producing  a 
mettle  of  manhood  more  precious  than  Corin- 
thian bronze. 

But  analogies  do  not  compel  the  modem 
mind  as  do  the  genetic  realities  of  historic  and 


Ethnic  Migrations  41 

current  human  evolution.  The  infinite  cosmic 
energy  gets  free  way  among  men,  augmenting 
the  total  life  of  mankind  most  effectively  along 
the  tracts  which  are  athrob  with  migrating 
humanity.  While  we  welcome  the  fresh  and 
needed  energy  which  the  newcomers  bring,  let 
us  share  with  them  the  loftiest  ideals  we  have 
and  the  uplifting  impulses  which  have  come  to 
the  human  race,  at  its  hours  of  deepest  insight.* 

*  For  this  purpose,  see  "  Early  Stories  and  Songs  for 
New  Students  of  English,"  by  Mary  Clark  Barnes. 
(Revell.) 


Ill 

Creative  Pioneering 

COLUMBUS  discovered  a  new  world. 
To-day  a  new  world  is  being  created. 
We  are  permitted  to  look  in  on  the 
process.  "  There  was  evening  and  there  was 
morning,"  of  momentous  import  seven  times, 
and  "  God  saw  everything  that  he  had  made, 
and  behold !  it  was  good."  The  result  is  won- 
derful and  is  commonly  dwelt  upon,  but  we 
are  invited  to  go  below  the  surface  and  to  see 
at  work  the  creative  factors.  A  number  of 
these  factors  are  at  work  at  the  same  time  in 
the  western  half  of  the  United  States.  For 
months  I  have  given  the  matter  first-hand 
study,  going  back  and  forth,  up  and  down, 
through  the  vast  region  and  staying  long 
enough  in  some  places  to  get  close  to  the 
people. 

One   creative    factor   in  making  this   new 
world  is  the  rapid  irrigation  of  deserts. 
42 


Creative  Pioneering  43 

"  Behold  I  will  do  a  new  thing,  now,  will  it 
spring  forth.  ...  I  will  even  make  a  way  in 
the  wilderness  and  rivers  in  the  desert." 

In  every  one  of  a  dozen  great  states,  in 
valley  after  valley  where  five  years  ago  there 
was  nothing  but  dust  and  ashes  with  forlorn 
tufts  of  sage  brush  on  the  gray  desert,  there 
are  now  wide  stretches  of  the  richest  verdure 
on  which  the  human  eye  can  rest,  field  upon 
field  of  deep  green  alfalfa.  Three  and  four 
crops  a  year  of  this  concentrated  food  for  the 
creatures  upon  which  man  depends  for  food, 
along  with  almost  incredible  crops  of  every 
other  kind,  account  for  settlers'  cabins  five 
hundred  rriiles  from  any  great  city,  planted 
almost  as  thickly  as  houses  along  a  suburban 
highway  of  a  metropolis. 

"  On  that  piece,"  said  a  farmer,  "  I  raised 
ninety  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre  last  year." 
In  famous  Minnesota  wheat  fields  the  writer 
has  known  forty  bushels  as  a  great  yield  and  in 
fertile  sections  of  Michigan,  twenty  bushels  as 
a  good  crop.  Fourteen  is  the  average  for  the 
whole  country.  Ninety  bushels  of  breadstuff 
to  the  acre!  But  wheat,  generally  speaking, 
is  too  thin  a  crop  for  the  intensive  farming  of 
irrigated  regions.  Fruit  is  better — pears  of 
such  preserving  and  at  the  same  time  mouth- 


44  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

watering  quality,  that  they  can  be  trundled 
three  thousand  miles  across  America  and 
pitched  another  three  thousand  miles  across 
the  Atlantic,  to  sell  in  London  for  eleven  dol- 
lars a  box  (less  than  a  bushel.)  On  every 
fruit-stand  from  Maine  to  Florida,  apples 
grown  on  the  Pacific  slope  have  displaced  the 
best  of  eastern  growth.  In  such  a  country 
farmsteads  are  not  four  to  the  square  mile  as 
in  the  old  West.  Twenty  acres  are  enough  to 
provide  for  a  family  of  five  and  make  it  rich; 
forty  are  a  superabundance.  A  public  motto 
in  some  sections  is  this,  *'  a  ten-acre  orchard 
means  an  independent  income  for  life."  Ten 
acres  make  the  normal  portion  in  great  tracts  of 
country.  Private  projects  have  irrigated  ten 
million  acres.  That  means,  taking  farm  and 
town  together,  the  establishment  of  at  least  a 
million  homes.  The  recent  Government  plants 
cover  three  million  acres,  with  fifty  million 
more  to  follow.  I  have  gone  through  many 
of  the  new  tracts,  settled  but  a  few  months, 
where  it  stirs  the  blood  to  the  tingling  point 
to  see  not  only  green  fields  and  great  stacks  of 
fodder,  but  new  homes  in  neighborly  nearness 
to  each  other,  with  school-houses — so  quickly 
built  in  every  American  community — not  far 
apart.    Think  of  the  fresh,  eager  community 


Creative  Pioneering  45 

life,  in  the  full  sense  of  that  sovereign  word, 
community,  which  is  being  at  this  moment 
created.  Is  Christ  being  clearly  affirmed  there 
as  the  inspiration  of  life  and  of  neighborhood 
in  their  only  full  meaning  ?  "  In  Him  all  things 
hold  together."  In  many  sections  of  this  new 
West,  boys  have  grown  to  the  voting  age 
without  ever  having  an  opportunity  to  hear  the 
gospel. 

But  the  development  of  the  country  on  a 
gigantic  scale  is  just  beginning.  Members  of 
a  Committee  of  the  United  States  Senate  who 
went  over  these  regions  carefully,  saw  that  more 
than  is  now  being  done  must  be  done  soon.  The 
Government  had  been  putting  eight  million  dol- 
lars into  irrigation  annually.  President  Taft 
recommended  that  bonds  be  issued  for 
$30,000,000  additional  to  be  expended  in  the 
next  few  years.  No  one  can  give  first  hand 
study  to  this  matter  without  agreeing  with  Mr. 
Roosevelt  that  it  is  the  most  significant  work 
which  the  Government  has  ever  undertaken.  It 
is  only  begun.  The  expert  estimate  is  that  Irri- 
gation will  bring  from  twenty-five  to  thirty 
million  people  into  the  New  West.  In  the  end 
these  people  will  have  a  large  part  of  the  agri- 
cultural wealth  of  the  country  and,  if  they  are 
Christians,  will  help  to  support  missions  in  the 


46  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

cities  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  now  peopled  so 
largely  by  foreigners. 

But  to-day  the  newer  West  is  in  its  infancy 
and  must  be  provided  for  for  a  little  while  just 
now,  like  your  own  boy  who,  by  and  by,  is  to 
be  a  greater  man  than  you.  When  you  hear 
of  enormous  dividends  in  the  West  even  now, 
remember  that  the  statistical  returns  show  that 
they  almost  all  come  back  East  as  interest  on 
borrowed  money.  The  East  is  eager  to  invest 
where  the  pioneers  must  make  it  pay.  When 
they  are  struggling  to  get  a  start  and  have  to 
put  together  everything  they  can  rake  and 
scrape  to  pay  the  East  interest,  we  ought,  at 
least,  to  help  them  with  the  gospel  of  courage 
in  their  mighty  creative  work. 

There  is  peculiar  joy  in  helping  the  little 
bands  of  Christians  who  are  almost  swamped 
by  anti-Christian  forces,  because  our  churches 
in  the  newest  West  give  heroically  not  only  for 
their  own  support  but  also  on  an  average  far 
above  the  average  of  the  giving  of  eastern 
churches  for  work  beyond  their  own  borders. 
The  figures  in  this  particular  are  nothing  less 
than  inspiring. 

The  farmers  and  their  families  require  many 
townspeople  to  serve  them  in  various  ways. 
Every  one  hundred  added  to  ranch  population 


Creative  Pioneering  47 

adds  twenty-seven  to  the  population  of  neigh- 
boring towns.  Hence  villages  spring  into 
being  in  a  month,  and  young  cities  in  a  year 
or  two.  Twin  Falls,  Idaho,  is  a  famous 
instance.  Desert,  desert,  in  every  direction  that 
the  eye  could  roam.  Six  years  and  there  were 
six  thousand  people  with  all  the  conveniences 
of  a  modern  city,  and  many  facilities  which  an 
eastern  city  of  that  size  has  not  produced  in 
sixty  years,  e.g.,  the  appliance  of  electricity 
to  household  heating  and  cooking.  But 
Twin  Falls  is  not  exceptional,  save  in 
the  matter  of  publicity.  It  is  typical.  In 
exceptional  cases  towns  of  twelve  and  even 
fifteen  thousand  people  have  sprung  up  in  three 
years.  Hundreds  of  towns  have  blossomed 
on  irrigated  tracts  in  the  last  five  years,  and 
hundreds  more  will  do  so  in  the  next  five  years. 
They  are  as  inevitable  as  volcanic  ash,  water, 
sunshine  and  toil.  There  is  no  evading  a  con- 
junction of  stars.  When  they  sing  together  it 
is  a  creative  day. 

What  does  it  mean  ?  It  means  people,  people, 
swarming  people.  The  process  of  swarming 
is  fascinating  to  behold.  Old  hives  over- 
crowded are  deserted.  The  air  is  flecked  with 
bees.  They  settle  together  at  some  point. 
There  is  a  new  swarm.    It  is  a  critical  moment. 


48  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

They  must  be  hived  at  once.  Otherwise,  no 
honey — or,  if  honey,  but  little,  and  that  mixed 
with  dirt  from  the  hole  in  the  ground  which 
the  swarm  has  found  for  itself,  or  with  rotten 
wood  from  a  hollow  log.  Countless  souls  for 
whom  Christ  gave  his  life  are  now  hunting 
homes  and  a  new  honey-making  life.  Shall 
they  have  only  the  bitter  bread  of  earthly  ashes 
and  be  destined  to  the  doom  of  the  rich  cities 
of  the  plain  which  Lot  coveted,  or  shall  we 
infuse  among  the  creative  forces  of  these  vast 
coming  communities  the  glad  tidings  of  endur- 
ing life  ,  the  "  Life  of  the  Ages?  " 

Another  creative  factor  in  making  the 
New  West  is  the  new  dry  farming  of  semi- 
arid  regions. 

Printing  space  does  not  allow  as  long  a  look 
at  this  as  at  the  preceding  factor,  but  it  stands 
for  other  creative  marvels,  some  of  them  more 
astounding  than  those  of  irrigation.  That  the 
bringing  of  water  to  volcanic  dust  and  other 
earthy  richness  of  the  New  World  makes  it 
fruitful,  is  a  glorious  revelation  but  ought  not 
to  be  surprising  since  milleniums  ago  the  over- 
flowing Nile  and  the  ditched  Euphrates  turned 
deserts  into  the  primal  garden-plots  of  civil- 
ization. But  when  a  limit  of  rainfall  has  long 
been  accepted  as  the  scientific  standard  below 


Creative  Pioneering  49 

which  agriculture  is  impracticable  and  it  is  sud- 
denly discovered  that  by  special  methods  of 
tillage  and  with  special  seed,  three-quarters  of 
this  or  even  one-half  of  it  is  enough  for  profit- 
able farming,  we  have  one  of  the  marvels  not 
of  the  nineteenth  century  but  of  the 
twentieth. 

Dr.  Wm.  MacDonald,  Editor  of  the  "  Agri- 
cultural Journal "  at  Pretoria,  South  Africa, 
after  extensive  travel  in  the  Western  United 
States  and  rigorous  investigation  of  the  sub- 
ject, says,  in  an  official  report  to  his  govern- 
ment :  "  Dry  farming  is  destined  in  the  imme- 
diate future  to  play  a  far  more  important  role 
in  agricultural  development  than  even  the  great 
art  of  irrigation." 

Fold  a  map  of  the  United  States  with  its 
eastern  and  western  edges  even.  The  crease 
down  the  center  is,  roughly  speaking,  the  divid- 
ing line  between  humid  and  arid  America. 
There  are  some  humid  sections  west  of  that 
line  and  many  semi-arid  regions. 

It  is  now  affirmed  that  the  equivalent  of  a 
belt  of  semi-arid  country  three  hundred  miles 
wide,  stretching  all  the  way  from  Canada  to 
Mexico,  is  thrown  open  to  farming  without 
the  necessity  of  irrigation. 

The  United  States  Department  of  Agricul- 


50  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

ture  sent  a  Dakota  college  professor  to  Russia 
to  hunt  for  arid  land  seed  at  a  cost  of  $10,000. 
He  brought  home  Durum  wheat.  In  eight 
years  our  Durum  wheat  crops  amounted 
to  $200,000,000. 

In  a  dry  land,  a  long  day's  journey  from  a 
stick  of  growing  wood  or  a  drop  of  running 
water,  where  it  is  two  hundred  feet  down  to 
well  water,  and  then  sometimes  a  scanty  sup- 
ply, I  have  seen  every  homestead  plot  with  a 
cabin  built  and  occupied,  or  a  "  dug-out  "  hab- 
itation in  process  of  making. 

What  does  it  mean  ?  People,  swarming  peo- 
ple, at  the  very  moment  of  swarming!  They 
can  prosper  without  much  rain  and  without 
irrigation  ditches,  but  they  perish  without  the 
Living  Water.  Without  it  their  children  will 
be  blighted  at  the  start. 

Another  Creative  Factor  in  making  the 
New  West  is  the  final  occupation  of  Indian 
lands. 

Slowly  through  three  hundred  years  the 
white  man  has  been  taking  possession  of  the 
red  man's  continent.  By  honorable  purchase, 
by  pretended  purchase,  by  red-handed  force, 
by  darker  means,  we  have  covered  in  to  our 
own  uses  his  territory.  Even  yet,  however,  at 
the  end  of  three  full  centuries  after  the  begin- 


Creative  Pioneering  51 

ning  at  Jamestown,  vast  domains  have  been 
reserved  still  in  the  name  of  remaining  abo- 
riginal tribes.  At  last  it  has  come  to  pass  that 
the  welfare  of  the  Indian  himself,  according  to 
the  judgment  of  his  best  friends,  requires  that 
instead  of  tribal  ownership  each  one  be  allot- 
ted a  generous  personal  holding,  and  that  the 
rest  of  the  reservation  be  thrown  open  to  white 
settlement.  Just  now  at  the  end  of  the  first 
decade  of  the  twentieth  century,  this  is  being 
done  as  it  never  has  been  done  before,  and  as 
it  never  can  be  done  again.  Ten  reservations 
have  been  opened,  practically  at  once.  An 
aggregate  area  considerably  greater  than  the 
entire  kingdom  of  Holland  is  being  settled  at 
this  moment.  Holland  contains  nearly  five 
million  people. 

Do  actual  settlers  want  these  lands?  They 
can  be  had  only  by  people  who  will  both  pay 
for  them  and  live  upon  them.  They  must 
journey  to  the  reservation  to  register  in 
advance  on  the  mere  hope  of  obtaining.  At 
one  of  the  registrations  which  I  visited,  where 
less  than  5000  farms  were  available,  114,769 
people  came  and  registered.  This  is  the  story 
everywhere.  What  does  it  mean?  People, 
people,  multitudes  of  people,  in  the  act  of 
swarming!  With  most  of  them  it  takes  all  the 


52  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

funds  they  can  get  together  to  secure  the  land 
and  get  upon  it  with  the  crudest  necessities  of 
occupation.  Shall  we  allow  such  communities 
to  be  created  without  lending  a  hand  to  put 
church  and  Bible-school  among  the  creative 
forces  ? 

Another  Creative  Factor  in  making  the  New 
West  is  the  current  turning  of  vast  grazing 
ranges  into  farmsteads. 

In  many  places  the  great  "  bonanza  farms  " 
are  being  divided  into  small  farms.  But  every- 
where the  immense  cattle  ranches  are  being 
broken  up  into  agricultural  ranches.  Recently 
in  California  an  old-time  ranch  about  the  size 
of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island  was  sold  for  this 
purpose.  In  another  of  the  huge  western 
states  ten  years  ago,  there  were  thirty  ranches 
of  a  million  acres  or  more  each.  Scarcely 
half  a  dozen  of  them  are  left  now.  These 
will  soon  go  to  pieces  under  the  inexorable 
hammering  of  profit  and  loss.  Were  nothing 
wanted  but  cattle,  two  acres  of  alfalfa  will  do 
more  than  forty  acres  of  wild  range.  The 
cow  boy  is  fast  passing.  Farmers  are  making 
fences,  and  with  their  families  are  building 
homes  all  over  the  once  wide,  open,  stretches. 

Again  it  is  people,  people,  swarming  people. 


Creative  Pioneering  53 

Shall  they  be  left  to  run  wild,  or  be  helped  to 
have  church  homes? 

If  one  were  in  the  attitude  of  special  plead- 
ing instead  of  being  in  the  attitude  of  stern 
scientific  observation,  he  would  separate  for 
the  sake  of  distinct  impressiveness  factors 
which  I  am  about  to  class  together  and  would 
dwell  on  still  other  factors  in  the  development 
of  the  far  West,  especially  mining  and  lumber- 
ing. The  bulk  of  the  remaining  wood  of  the 
country,  and  nearly  all  of  its  precious  metals, 
are  in  the  western  half  of  the  land.  Some 
believe  that  the  discovery  of  abundance  of 
gold  has  been  a  leading  factor  in  the  dominance 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  However  that  may 
be,  the  most  sudden  and  spectacular  swarming 
of  people  is  at  new  mining  points  and  is  a  con- 
stant occurrence.  These  new  communities 
include  men,  women  and  children  who  desper- 
ately need  the  gospel,  especially  men,  stalwart 
men.  But  all  that  I  pass.  I  prefer  to  confine 
attention  to  the  agricultural  interests  and  other 
fundamental  tendencies  of  humanity  which 
are,  beyond  question,  the  basis  of  permanent 
population  and  of  all  civilization.  In  a  calm 
spirit  of  study  we  are  looking  only  at  elements 
of  human  life  which  are  the  causes  of  an 
inevitable  evolution. 


54  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

Another  Factor — or  rather  pair  of  factors — 
of  this  basic  order  in  making  the  New  West 
is  today's  reinforcement  of  the  migratory 
instinct  by  industrial  stress. 

Migration  is  one  of  the  deepest  tendencies 
of  humanity.  It  has  become  inbred  by  count- 
less generations  of  movement  over  the  face  of 
the  earth.  But  the  instinct  is  especially  keen  in 
America  because  by  its  operation  the  oldest 
portions  of  the  land  have  been  occupied  so 
recently  that  the  migratory  feeling  is  fresh 
and  lusty.  Migration  is  a  national  habit.  The 
movement  is  constantly  freshened  by  new  tides 
from  the  old  world. 

The  Pilgrim  breed  is  being  pushed  as  well 
as  pulled  further  and  further  west.  Iowa  has 
long  had  more  New  England  blood  and  literacy 
than  New  England  itself.  To-day  the  census 
indicates  a  small  minority  of  Yankee  stock  in 
Massachusetts  and  a  great  majority  of  it  in 
Idaho. 

At  the  present  hour  the  primeval  instinct  of 
migration  is  mightily  reinforced  by  industrial 
unrest.  What  the  merits  of  the  case  may  be, 
is  another  question — a  labyrinth  of  questions. 
Whatever  it  be,  the  psychological  result  is  a 
state  of  mind  which  is  eager  for  industrial 
outlet,  for  untrammeled  opportunity.    The  vir- 


Creative  Pioneering  55 

gin  fields  of  the  West  come  nearest  to  meeting 
the  need. 

Thus  the  four  great  classes  of  unparalleled 
openings  at  the  present  moment  appeal  to  a 
profound  want,  which  now  as  never  before,  is 
a  hunger — a  hunger  with  pangs  in  it.  It  is  the 
co-operation  of  these  factors  which  is  creating 
the  New  West  of  to-day  with  a  swiftness 
undreamed  of  a  few  years  ago.  If  we  do  not 
rub  our  eyes  open  quickly  this  phenomenal 
state  of  affairs  will  have  passed  before  we 
know  of  it.  But  the  consequences  of  our  neg- 
lect will  not  have  passed.  For  the  people,  peo- 
ple, people,  who  are  swarming  in  the  West,  are 
just  now  giving  the  set  to  new  communities  for 
untold  generations  to  come.  Christ  will  be  in 
the  genesis  of  those  communities  and  genera- 
tions, if  you  and  I  give  him  a  chance. 

Another  Creative  Factor  which  is  mak- 
ing the  New  West  is  the  intense  exploiting  of 
the  last  continental  opportunities. 

The  factors  which  we  have  observed  to  be 
at  work  are  sufficiently  powerful  in  themselves, 
but  their  force  is  greatly  multiplied  by  the  fact 
that  we  now  are  entering  into  the  use  of  the 
last  of  such  opportunities  that  our  country  ever 
can  have.  This  is  not  a  matter  of  speculation. 
It  is  a  matter  of  inflexible  natural  conditions. 


56  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

There  will  be  opportunities  of  other  kinds,  but 
land  hunger  is  facing  its  last  meal.  The  zestful 
activities  which  belong  to  the  settlement  of  a 
new  country,  the  ineffable  qualities  which  have 
made  America  peculiarly  America — to  milHons 
of  us  the  most  glorious  country  in  the  world — 
these  distinguishing  features  of  life  are  coming 
to  their  final  exercise. 

For  many  a  day  to  come  there  will  be  land 
openings  of  a  limited  sort,  but  soon  there  will 
be  no  great  areas  which  can  be  developed  on  a 
vast  scale. 

Hence  men  of  sagacity  are  racing  each 
other  in  endeavoring  to  get  a  hold  upon  the 
remaining  continental  opportunities.  This  is 
conspicuous  in  railroad  enterprise,  though  by 
no  means  confined  to  that  realm.  We  are  told 
the  number  of  transcontinental  lines  which  are 
just  now  stretching  for  the  goal,  but  we  can 
have  no  true  sense  of  this  until  we  live  for  at 
least  a  little  while  in  the  regions  most  directly 
affected.  Then  we  find  the  atmosphere  in 
electric  tension  on  these  matters.  An  example 
of  another  kind  is  the  opening  of  conspicuous 
show-rooms  in  the  East,  as  on  a  prominent 
corner  of  Broadway,  New  York,  for  the  exhi- 
bition of  the  products  of  a  tract  of  land  which 
is  being  put  upon  the  market.    Rich  red  apples 


Creative  Pioneering  57 

and  other  fruit  in  bewildering  variety  attract 
attention,  engaging  expounders  deepen  it,  and 
the  most  costly,  picturesque  printing  fastens  it. 

Out  of  the  desire  to  make  the  most  of  the 
opportunities  come  elaborate  advertising  and 
stimulation  of  the  movement  westward  along 
with  the  furnishing  of  great  facilities  and  in- 
ducements for  going.  Hence  the  movement  is 
not  left  alone  to  the  operation  of  the  great 
factors  before  enumerated,  but  is  quickened 
by  all  the  skill  of  the  most  vigorous  brains  in 
the  country. 

The  Old  West  was  peopled  by  wagon  loads, 
the  New  West  is  being  peopled  by  train  loads. 
A  big  family  with  one  "  prairie  schooner " 
might  include  a  dozen  individuals.  But  a 
single  car  holds  fifty  people  and  there  are 
several  cars  to  a  train.  I  was  on  a  train  packed 
with  pioneers  going  to  a  land  opening  at  the 
end  of  a  long  branch  line.  The  road  advertised 
hourly  trains  to  this  far-away  opening  for  new 
homes. 

Any  one  of  the  six  factors  named  would  be 
enough  to  make  a  New  World  for  myriads  of 
people.  But  when  they  all  are  working  at  the 
same  time,  with  the  intensity  involved  in  its 
being  the  only  time,  nothing  can  characterize 


58  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  result  but  an  exclamation.  People,  people, 
immortal  souls  aswarm! 

The  finishing  factor  of  the  Creative  Week 
in  the  New  West  is  the  unprecedented  making 
of  manhood. 

"  God  formed  man  and  breathed  into  his 
nostrils  the  breath  of  life."  The  tides  of  his- 
tory are  not  waves  of  hydrogen-oxide  heaping 
up  dunes  of  wheat  or  gold  dust.  The  on- 
coming tides  of  humanity  are  the  movements 
of  the  Almighty  in  the  evolution  of  manhood. 
The  forces  at  play  are  infinitely  vital. 

"  God  had  sifted  three  kingdoms  to  find  the 

wheat  for  this  planting, 
Then  had  sifted  the  wheat  as  the  living  seed  of 

a  nation." 

That  old  American  seed  has  been  sifted  still 
again  for  the  western  planting.  Young,  virile, 
progressive  people  are  laying  foundations  on 
the  slopes  of  the  Rockies.  There  is  no  reason 
known  why  the  highest  type  of  manhood  ever 
to  appear  should  not  be  developed  somewhere 
between  the  Mississippi  and  the  Pacific. 
Washington,  the  typical  Atlantic  slope  Amer- 
ican, and  Lincoln,  the  typical  Old  West  Amer- 
ican, may  well  be  succeeded  by  the  superlative 


Creative  Pioneering  59 

American  rising  somewhere  in  the  New  West. 
God  grant  that  there  may  be  no  terrific  national 
emergency  to  call  him  out,  and  that  when  he 
comes,  it  may  not  be  as  the  **  super-man  "of 
materialistic  conception,  but  as  God's  man  for 
the  uplift  of  all  his  fellows  on  this  continent 
and  other  continents!  Let  the  father  of  his 
country  and  the  saviour  of  the  United  States 
be  followed  by  a  spirit-quickener  of  the  United 
.World. 

There  is  more  than  the  sifting  of  seed  and 
the  westward  course  of  empire  to  suggest  such 
expectancy.  The  conditions  of  life  in  the  once 
arid  West  necessitate  a  peculiarly  keen,  alert 
and  at  the  same  time,  steady  going  and  reliable 
type  of  mind.  A  few  generations  in  the  region 
where  man  must  provide  himself  with  rain,  or 
its  equivalent,  may  well  develop  a  supremely 
provident,  providential  order  of  manhood.  "  In 
the  image  of  God  created  He  him." 

"  Nature,  they  say,  doth  dote. 
And  cannot  make  a  man 
Save  on  some  worn-out  plan 
Repeating  us  by  rote ; 
For   him   her   Old-World   moulds   aside   she 

threw. 
And  choosing  sweet  clay  from  the  breast 
Of  the  unexhausted  West, 


60  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

With  stuff  untainted  shaped  a  hero  new, 
Wise,  steadfast  in  the  strength  of  God  and 
true." 


If  conditions  of  the  Old  West  could  make 
such  manhood  as  that  of  Lincoln, 

"  New    birth    of    our    new    soil,    the    first 
American," 

we  can  wisely  hope  that  in  the  New  West 
conditions  far  more  unique  and  generative  may- 
evolve  the  final  American.  We  had  noble  co- 
lonial Americans,  we  have  had  splendid  Amer- 
ican Americans.  Shall  we  not  look  for  the 
ultimate  product  of  our  soil  to  be  cosmopolitan 
Americans  and  to  grow  in  the  vast  regions  of 
inconceivable  fertility  which  stretch  away 
everywhere  in  sight  of  inspiring  mountain 
peaks  facing  the  Pacific,  "  the  Mediterranean 
Sea  of  the  world's  future?  " 

There -is  one  "if  "—but  one  fatal  "if  "— 
ferreting  its  way  to  the  very  heart  of  these  rea- 
sonable expectations.  If  the  on-coming,  inev- 
itable, colossal  race  in  the  New  West  should 
fail  to  have  its  central,  creative  factor  the 
Word,  it  would  become  only  a  brilliant,  titanic 
brutalism.     "All  things  were  made  through 


Creative  Pioneering  61 

Him,  and  without  Him  was  not  anything  made. 
That  which  hath  been  made  was  hfe  in  Him, 
and  the  Hfe  was  the  Hght  of  men."  Unless 
humanity  has  in  it  divinity,  it  ceases  to  be 
humanity.  Brutal  materialism  is  boldly  advo- 
cated by  some  in  these  days.  It  is  covertly 
cultivated  by  more.  There  is  a  leaven  at  work 
which  is  worse  than  sadducean.  Hundreds  of 
Sunday  schools  (!)  in  the  West  are  teaching 
not  only  that  there  is  no  spirit  in  man,  but  also 
that  there  is  no  God  in  the  universe.  On  the 
other  hand  it  is  found  by  careful  investigation 
that  there  are  thousands,  literally  thousands  of 
organized  public  school  districts — mark  you, 
organized  because  there  are  enough  young 
people  living  there  of  school  age  to  meet  the 
legal  requirements  for  the  organization  of  a 
public  school  district — without  Bible-schools 
or  other  regular  religious  services  of  any  de- 
nomination in  them. 

If  we  create  the  rising  generation  in  this 
way,  to  what  will  it  come?  No  mere  intel- 
lectual sharpening  ever  made  imperial  man- 
hood. Every  document  that  came  from  the 
hand  of  George  Washington  was  badly  spelled, 
but  was  lifted  to  an  exalted  rank  by  recogni- 
tion of  the  hand  of  Almighty  God  in  human 
history.  Abraham  Lincoln's  thought  and  feel- 
ing were  surcharged  with  vision  caught  from 


62  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  Bible  seers.  Neither  bumper  crops  nor  in- 
ternational trade  nor  wireless  telegraph  nor 
aerial  navigation  can  create  a  lofty,  cosmo- 
politan type  of  manhood,  unless  there  is  at 
heart  of  it  all  a  sense  of  the  infinite  Love.  This 
is  the  factor  in  the  Creative  Week  in  the  New 
West  which  you  and  I  are  permitted  to  supply 
by  sending  the  glad  tidings  of  measureless 
good  incarnate  in  the  man  of  Nazareth,  of 
Calvary  and  of  Olivet. 

The  moral  emergency  in  the  creation  of  the 
newer  West,  extremely  critical  in  the  nature 
of  the  case,  is  further  complicated  by  Mor- 
monism.* 

More  than  a  few  of  us  will  live  to  see  as 
many  people  on  the  Pacific  side  of  our  land  as 
are  now  in  the  entire  country.  The  greatest 
spring-tide  of  humanity  ever  seen  by  any  one 
generation  is  rising.  There  has  been  a  long, 
low  swell  in  advance.  Just  now  the  crest  of 
the  wave  is  breaking  over  the  Rockies-  The 
beginning  of  the  second  decade  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  is  the  hour  of  destiny.  Call  it  the 
moment  of  conception,  call  it  the  Creative 
Week,  call  it  simply  the  time  in  the  history  of 
humanity  in  its  movement  around  the  planet 

*See  "Mormonism  the  Islam  of  America,"  by  Dr. 
Bruce  Kinney.     (Revell.) 


Creative  Pioneering  63 

when  the  final  evolution  of  the  mightiest  race 
of  men  is  being  initiated  and  determined.  It 
is  the  time  when  the  life  of  the  Occident  is 
fixing  the  nature  of  its  own  climax  at  the  very 
place  where,  at  last,  it  comes  face  to  face  with 
the  Orient.  It  is  the  crisis  toward  which  all 
crises  have  converged  since  history  began. 

The  Far  East  and  the  Final  West  have  come 
together.  For  a  century  to  come,  perhaps  for 
a  millennium,  the  western  half  of  America, 
touching  the  Far  East  closely,  will  have  every- 
thing to  do  with  shaping  its  character. 

Will  He  by  whom  the  worlds  were  made  be 
obliged  to  stand  once  more  before  His  church 
and  say,  "  Thou  knewest  not  the  time  of  thy 
visitation?  " 

"  I  hear  the  tread  of  pioneers 

Of  nations  yet  to  be. 
The  first  low  wash  of  w'aves  where  soon 

Shall  roll  a  human  sea. 
The  elements  of  empire  there 

Are  plastic  yet  and  warm. 
The  chaos  of  a  mighty  world 

Is  rounding  into  form." 

Omnipotent  forces  are  making  a  new  earth. 
The  God-like  work  of  making  a  new  heaven 
on  that  new  earth  is  committed  to  you  and  me. 


64  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

^re  we  doing  it?  It  is  a  question  for  each  one 
of  us — How  much  am  I  doing  to  make  the 
western  half  of  my  own  country  a  Christian 
land? 

There,  as  nowhere  else  on  earth,  the  destiny 
of  the  whole  human  race  is  now  balancing — 
pivoted. 


IV 
Social  Justice 

EXTREMES  meet.  Old  high  Galvanism 
and  new  extreme  evolutionism  agree 
that  the  will  of  man  is  always  prede- 
termined. Seventeenth  century  Puritanism 
and  twentieth  century  socialism  exalt  justice 
as  the  supreme  moral  quality.  Justice  will 
stand  comparison  with  any  other  virtue  as  to 
central  importance  in  human  life.  Every  self- 
respecting  person  if  compelled  to  choose  be- 
tween justice  and  benevolence  in  the  treatment 
of  himself  by  others  would  prefer  to  be  treated 
justly.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  no  conflict. 
Love,  the  infinite  good,  includes  justice  as  well 
as  benevolence.  Benevolence  without  justice 
in  it  is  not  truly  benevolent,  and  without  benev- 
olence justice  is  likely  to  be  unjust.  Still,  if  the 
heart  of  character  is  kindness,  its  backbone  is 
justice.  In  a  critical  emergency  would  one 
choose  to  entrust  his  case  to  courteous  Latin 
65 


66  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

effusiveness  or  to  taciturn  Scotch  definiteness  ? 
At  any  rate  justice  is  fundamental.  Character 
to  be  four-square  must  have  justice  for  one  of 
the  corner  stones. 

Justice  belongs  to  groups  as  well  as  to  indi- 
viduals. The  origin  of  the  sense  of  justice  is 
closely  associated  with  primitive  tribal  experi- 
ences. In  the  current  conscience  of  the  most 
advanced  peoples  the  sense  of  collective  justice 
is  greatly  increasing,  in  fact,  is,  much  more 
acute  to-day  than  in  any  previous  generation. 

Recompense  is  a  primary  element  in  justice. 
When  one  has  been  deprived  of  his  rights  by 
another  the  first  act  of  justice  is  restitution.  A 
large  part  of  all  the  law  pertains  to  that.  The 
chief  business  of  courts  of  justice  is  to  secure 
restitution  or  the  recovery  of  a  disturbed  equi- 
librium of  possessions  and  rights. 

One  of  the  most  elemental  of  moral  obliga- 
tions is  that  which  we  are  under  to  a  group  of 
people  because  of  wrongs  which  they  have 
suffered  at  the  hands  of  our  own  group.  It  is 
easy  to  overlook  this.  Superficial  students  of 
missionary  obligation  are  apt  to  base  every- 
thing on  the  numbers  and  on  the  destitution  of 
the  unevangelized.  It  is  an  easy  way  to  think 
and  talk  of  the  millions  who  are  utterly  with- 
out the  light  which  we  have,  as  if  the  weight 


Social  Justice  67 

of  our  obligation  could  be  wholly  gauged  by 
number  and  destitution.  But  if  one  has  stolen 
from  a  man,  though  he  know  a  thousand  men 
poorer  than  that  man,  his  first  obligation  is  to 
make  restitution  to  the  one  wronged.  That  is  a 
thousand-fold  more  binding  than  any  obliga- 
tion to  the  others.  There  are  whole  groups  of 
people  in  America  concerning  whom  this  ele- 
mental principle  of  justice  applies. 

The  American  Indians  have  a  claim  upon  us 
which  we  can  not  begin  to  measure  by  their 
numbers,  their  moral  destitution  or  their  prob- 
able influence  on  the  future  of  humanity.  If 
there  were  only  one  hundred  of  them,  instead 
of  hundreds  of  thousands,  if  they  were  all 
within  the  sphere  of  low  forms  of  nominal 
Christianity,  instead  of  being  still  in  unmiti- 
gated heathen  darkness,  if  none  of  them  could 
ever  contribute  to  the  main  current  of  human 
history,  instead  of  contributing  as  they  do  con- 
siderable factors  to  Congress  and  other  high 
walks  of  influence,  we  should  still  be  under  a 
primary  and  immeasurable  obligation  to  them, 
because  we  have  dispossessed  them.  The  con- 
tinent was  theirs.  We  now  call  it  ours.  By  all 
the  pride  we  have  in  it,  by  all  we  get  out  of  it, 
by  all  its  beauty  which  is  dear  to  us,  by  all  its 
magnificence  which  we  glorify,  we  are  bound 


68  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

to  give  to  the  remnant  of  the  aborigines  without 
stint  the  choicest  goods  we  have.  "  If  a  man 
shall  cause  a  field  or  vineyard  to  be  eaten,  and 
shall  let  his  beast  loose,  and  it  feed  in  another 
man's  field ;  of  the  best  of  his  own  field,  and  of 
the  best  of  his  own  vineyard,  shall  he  make 
restitution."     (Exodus  22:  5.) 

After  three  hundred  years  of  Anglo-Saxon 
occupation  which  began  by  officially  proclaim- 
ing as  its  "  principale  ende,"  the  conversion  of 
the  natives,  whole  bands  of  them  are  still  with- 
out the  slightest  touch  of  the  Gospel.  Multi- 
tudes more  are  barely  touched,  are  essentially 
unevangelized.  What  a  commentary  is  this, 
more  than  two  hundred  and  ninety  years  long, 
on  the  "  great  hope "  of  the  Pilgrims  as 
recorded  by  Bradford  himself :  "  A  great  hope 
&  inward  zeall  they  had  of  laying  some 
good  foundation,  or  at  least  to  make  some  way 
therunto,  for  ye  propagating  &  advancing  ye 
gospell  of  ye  kingdom  of  Christ  in  those 
remote  parts  of  ye  world;  yea,  though  they 
should  be  but  even  as  stepping-stones  unto 
others  for  ye  performing  of  so  great  a  work."* 
Those  devout  Pilgrims  were  indeed  "  step- 
ping-stones unto  others  " — are  there  not  some 

*  For  other  similar  data  see  "  Two  Thousand  Years 
of  Missions  Before  Carey,"  Chapter  XXIV. 


Social  Justice  69 

thirty  million  communicants  in  the  United 
States? — but  not  "for  ye  performing  of  so 
great  a  work  "  as  bringing  the  Gospel  to  three 
hundred  thousand  Indians.  Elemental  justice 
calls  upon  us  to  wipe  out  the  disgrace  of  three 
hundred  years,  and  make  restitution  out  of 
the  best  we  have,  the  best  of  our  own  field  and 
the  best  of  our  own  vineyard. 

Our  Anglo-Saxon  Christianity  is  under  a 
similar  obligation  of  elemental  justice  to  the 
Negroes  in  the  United  States.  In  this  case  the 
obligation  is  intensified,  not  only  by  their 
greater  numbers,  but,  still  more  by  the  fact 
that  we  brought  them  to  this  land,  and  by 
sheer  brute  force.  Our  forefathers.  North  as 
well  as  South,  kidnapped  the  Africans,  often 
after  instigating  bloody  raids  for  that  purpose, 
and  dragged  them  hither  through  the  awful 
tortures  of  "  the  middle  passage." 

They  have  multiplied  into  millions.  We 
have  asked  them  to  share  with  us  the  responsi- 
bilities of  the  great  democratic  experiment  on 
the  planet.  We  have  put  them  under  this  tre- 
mendous burden  without  the  centuries  of  train- 
ing which  our  Anglo-Saxon  race  has  had. 
What  it  took  us  a  thousand  years  to  acquire 
we  thrust  upon  them,  with  no  such  millennium 
of  evolution  behind  them.     The  least  we  can 


70  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

do  is  to  use  every  measure  possible  to  accel- 
erate their  evolution.  With  such  help  it  is 
moving  much  faster  than  did  that  of  our  own 
forefathers.  For  white  men  to  help  black  men 
on  a  large  scale  in  America,  however  costly, 
can  scarcely  be  called  benevolence,  it  is  col- 
lective justice.  The  first  ship  to  bring  African 
slaves  to  the  American  colonies  by  a  frightful 
irony  was  named  Jesus.  In  the  conception  of 
those  days  there  may  have  seemed  no  impro- 
priety in  the  name,  the  master  of  the  ship 
might,  in  fact,  have  been  one  of  the  most  de- 
vout of  men.  The  sense  of  collective  justice 
has  so  vastly  broadened  and  deepened  since 
those  days  that  we  are  impelled  to  strenuous 
exertion  in  order  to  make  the  name  of  that 
slave  ship  ultimately  good  for  the  African  race 
in  America  and  so  throughout  the  world. 

There  is  a  third  direction  in  which  the  ele- 
mental principle  of  collective  justice  cries  aloud 
to  us.  A  favored  few  have  taken  possession 
of  the  bulk  of  the  goods  of  America.  Those 
goods  have  been  accumulated  by  the  toil  of 
the  vast  majority,  who  are  dispossessed.  It  is 
silly  for  us  to  rail  at  any  one  on  this  account. 
All  are  living  in  glass  houses,  or  trying  to  do 
so.  Hence  we  better  not  throw  stones.  The 
men  who  have  got  the  goods  have  averaged 


Social  Justice  71 

no  worse  than  the  men  who  have  failed  to  get 
them.  All  alike  have  been  working  under  a 
system  of  "  catch  as  catch  can."  Grant  that 
the  leaders  of  the  race  which  has  dispossessed 
the  Indians  have  been  good  men.  Grant  that 
the  leaders  of  the  race  which  took  possession 
of  the  Negroes  were  good  men.  Grant  that  the 
leaders  of  the  class  which  has  coralled  most  of 
the  earth's  goods  are  good  men.  The  only 
sincere  thing  for  any  one  to  think  or  say  is  that 
in  the  evolution  of  humanity  the  hour  has 
finally  struck  when  a  sense  of  collective  justice 
is  developed  sufficiently  to  make  restitution 
both  possible  and  necessary.  The  submerged 
classes  are  to  be  lifted  up  and  placed  on  deck. 
America  has  always  meant  that  by  intention. 
The  intention  is  coming  to  new  embodiment. 
What  action  of  the  principle  of  restitution  has 
ever  taken  place  on  such  magnificent  scale? 
One  of  great  wealth  declares  that  it  is  a  shame 
to  die  rich.  One  of  the  Christian  millionaires 
has  recently  died  poor  after  conscientiously 
distributing  all.  The  most  conspicuous  Chris- 
tian man  of  vast  wealth  has  for  months  been 
pleading  with  the  public  to  take  it  all.  When 
such  marvels  are  being  performed,  if  we  can 
only  have  a  little  patience  with  one  another  and 
diligent  perseverance  in  learning  how  to  safely 


72  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

and  wisely  do  it,  a  way  will  be  found  of  putting 
into  practice  collective  justice  between  all  races 
and  all  classes. 

The  missionary  undertaking  has  been  stand- 
ing on  one  leg,  benevolence.  It  has  two.  The 
other  is  justice.  It  will  show  its  virility  and 
take  the  commanding  position  which  belongs 
to  it  when  it  stands  squarely  on  justice  as  well 
as  on  benevolence.  In  addition  to  the  three 
directions  just  indicated  there  are  others  in 
which  justice  plays  no  small  part.  But  these 
are  broad,  outstanding  features  of  missions  in 
the  New  World  and  are  sufficient  to  indicate 
the  fundamental  place  of  justice  in  the  mission- 
ary enterprise.  That  enterprise  has  been  hop- 
ping along  on  one  foot  under  noble,  but  inter- 
mittent impulses.  As  it  gets  on  both  feet  it 
will  take  up  a  steady,  triumphant  march.  The 
sense  of  justice  is  deep  in  every  man  who  is  fit 
to  be  called  a  man.  Of  every  such  man  it  re- 
quires a  worthy  share  In  the  undertaking  to 
uplift  all  races  and  classes  in  America. 


V 
National  Neighborhood 

SOME  obligations  are  temporary,  fleeting, 
rooted  in  time,  others  are  elemental, 
inevitable,  rooted  in  space.  Ships 
within  range  of  the  Titanic' s  S.  O.  S.  (save  our 
souls)  are  by  reason  of  nearness  under  supreme 
obligation. 

Obligations  grow  out  of  the  fact  that  we 
are  members  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Next 
door  to  my  office  in  New  York  is  a  splendid 
building  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals.  Hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  are  invested,  merely  to  have  an  office 
from  which  to  administer  the  work  and  dis- 
charge obligations  that  rest  on  our  relationship 
to  contemporary  animals. 

Obligations    grow    still   more    out    of   our 

human  relationships.    Every  human  being  has 

a  claim  on  us.    It  is  our  privilege  to  undertake 

the  betterment  of  every  soul  on  the  planet.  Not 

73 


74  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

to  do  that  is  to  live  a  needlessly  small  life.  Ele- 
mental obligations  grow  out  of  civic  relations 
of  various  kinds.  The  city  in  which  we  live, 
the  commonwealth  in  which  we  live,  the  nation 
in  which  we  live,  give  birth  to  profound  obli- 
gations. 

To  come  closer  still,  and  to  a  more  intimate 
circle,  there  are  elemental  obligations  in  domes- 
tic relationships,  those  of  husband  and  wife, 
parent  and  child,  and  all  others  who  are  so 
related  to  us  that  it  is  our  divine  privilege  to 
care  for  them.  He  that  does  not  do  it  is  worse 
than  an  infidel.    They  are  genetic  obligations. 

One  of  the  elemental  obligations  is  that 
growing  out  of  neighborhood.  In  fact,  this 
obligation  growing  out  of  neighborhood  in- 
cludes all  the  others.  It  underlies  all  the 
others,  that  is,  gives  them  their  possibility  and 
their  significance.  We  may  not  know  anything 
about  the  suffering  of  an  animal  in  the  Hima- 
layan Mountains,  but  when  we  see  one  suffer- 
ing before  our  eyes,  there  is  an  obligation 
because  of  its  neighborhood. 

This  relationship  of  neighborhood  is  ever- 
lasting. Each  of  the  others  may  cease.  It  is 
not  commonly  believed  that  the  animal  world, 
below  men,  will  survive  death.  We  are  not 
certain  about  the  human  relations  forever  and 


National  Neighborhood  75 

ever.  It  is  certain  that  civic  relations  will  dis- 
solve. Even  the  most  sacred  of  them  all,  the 
domestic  relation,  will  utterly  change,  for  in 
heaven  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in 
marriage. 

The  one  of  the  great  elemental  relations 
which  is  everlasting,  is  neighborhood.  You 
and  I  never  will  be  omnipresent.  God  only  is 
that, — the  universal  Neighbor.  We  shall  be 
forever  and  ever  somewhere,  not  everywhere, 
in  some  one  part  of  space,  and  therefore  shall 
be  in  obligation  to  all  who  are  there.  We  shall 
always  be  near  to  some  one  and  therefore  under 
special  obligation.  God  is  everywhere.  We 
are  always  in  relation  to  him.  We  are  always 
in  relation  to  our  neighbors.  Those  are  the 
two  elemental,  eternal,  inescapable  relation- 
ships, to  God  and  to  other  neighbors.  Hence 
it  is  that  Jesus  names  these  two  as  the  supreme 
obligations  which  include  all  the  rest.  Then, 
he  goes  on  in  his  own  large  way,  lifted  com- 
pletely out  of  all  pettiness,  to  unfold  this 
principle  of  neighborhood,  setting  it  forth  on 
an  international  scale. 

The  whole  story  of  Israel,  the  messianic 
nation,  is  interwoven  inextricably  with  that  of 
the  neighboring  nations.  The  great  dynasties 
of  Egypt,  to  the  westward,  and  the  great  em- 


76  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

pires  succeeding  one  another  in  the  Euphrates 
Valley  on  the  eastward,  occupy  a  large  part  of 
the  story  of  the  Bible  because  they  were  the 
neighbors  of  the  Israelitish  nation. 

Jesus  when  he  is  talking  with  a  thoughtful 
lawyer,  takes  for  illustration  the  nearest  of  the 
national  neighbors.  The  "  Good  Samaritan," 
illuminates  for  all  time  this  eternal  principle 
of  neighborhood. 

It  is  common  to  magnify  one's  own  nation 
and  belittle  all  other  nations.  Oh,  he  is  only 
a  "Dago,"  or  a  "  Sheeny,"  or  something;  we 
are  Americans !  But  Jesus  when  he  wanted  to 
hold  up  for  everlasting  admiration  a  fine  trait 
of  character,  gratitude,  took  a  foreigner.  The 
one  man  who  exhibited  that,  the  cured  leper 
who  came  back  to  say  "  Thank  you,"  was  a 
Samaritan.  Again  Jesus  wanted  to  reveal  the 
highest  spiritual  truth  and  he  revealed  it  to 
a  Samarian.  God  is  Spirit  and  they  that  wor- 
ship Him  must  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 
Religion  is  universal.  Wherever  men  are  sin- 
cere and  honest,  there  God  is  worshipped.  He 
revealed  this  revolutionary  sublime  truth  to  a 
Samaritan. 

Everybody  would  agree  that  one  of  the  two 
or  three  greatest  parables  of  all  the  wonderful 
parables  that  Jesus  gave,  was  this  of  the  good 


National  Neighborhood  77 

fellow-countryman — oh,  no,  not  the  good  Jew, 
but  the  Good  Samaritan.  Thus  Jesus  put  in 
practice  the  principle  of  showing  the  greatest 
appreciation  instead  of  depreciation,  of  the 
commonly  despised  and  commonly  disparaged 
Samaritans. 

Nothing  is  more  needed  at  the  present  junc- 
ture of  events  in  America,  than  a  Christ-like 
appreciation  of  all  our  national  neighbors. 
Who  are  they?  The  very  last  words  of  Jesus 
were :  **  You  shall  be  my  witnesses  in  Jerusa- 
lem and  in  all  Judea  and  Samaria,  and  unto 
the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth." 

Our  Jerusalem  is,  of  course,  the  city  where 
we  live ;  our  Judea,  it  is  equally  obvious,  is  our 
own  country;  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth 
are,  without  question,  all  the  continents  outside 
of  our  own.  But,  where  is  our  Samaria?  It  is 
that  portion  of  our  own  continent  which  lies 
between  our  own  country  and  another  conti- 
nent, namely,  Spanish  North  America.  That 
is  our  Samaria,  Shall  we  seek  to  apreciate  this 
near  national  neighbor  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus, 
who  says  that  one  of  the  two  elemental,  eter- 
nal, supreme,  obligations  is  to  love  with  a  love 
that  takes  care  of  them,  our  neighbors,  though 
they  are  of  a  nationality  that  we  are  inclined 
to  disparage?  How  much  do  ordinary  Amer- 


78  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  ^Missions 

icans  think  of  Spanish- Americans  ?  We  are  apt 
to  think  of  them  in  about  the  way  they  used  to 
think  of  the  old  Samaritans.  Let  us  try  to 
think  of  them  in  the  way  that  Jesus  thought 
of  the  Samaritans  of  his  day. 

In  seeking  to  appreciate  our  national  neigh- 
bors, note  their  nearness  to  us.  Our  Samaria 
is  so  near  to  us  that  when  they  get  to  quar- 
reling down  there  and  shoot  at  each  other, 
their  bullets  come  over  the  line  and  hit  us. 
Our  Samaria  is  getting  nearer  and  nearer  to 
us.  We  are  throwing  our  arms  around  it. 
Sooner  than  we  expected  the  Panama  Canal 
is  to  be  opened.  The  canal  zone  is  American 
soil.  Our  flag  floats  there.  Let  us  hope  that 
not  another  square  foot  of  our  Samaria  will  be 
politically  annexed  but,  like  the  old  Samaria, 
we  "  must  needs  go  through "  it  in  getting 
from  one  part  of  our  own  country  to  another. 
Everything  that  is  this  side  of  the  canal  is 
within  our  immediate  circle.  It  is  exceedingly 
near  to  us. 

Note  also  the  greatness  of  our  Samaria. 
There  are  nine  Republics  in  Spanish  North 
America,  not  going  beyond  the  Panama  Canal. 
There  is  also  one  French  republic,  making  ten 
of  these  republics  on  our  continent,  and  its 
adjacent  islands.     One  of  the  ten,   and   the 


National  Neighborhood  79 

nearest  of  these  neighbors,  has  an  area  as  great 
as  the  combined  area  of  Germany,  Great  Brit- 
ain, France  and  Italy,  We  have  been  incHned 
to  think  of  our  Samaria  as  insignificant.  There 
are  15,000,000  people  in  Mexico,  5,000,000  in 
the  Central  American  republics,  2,000,000  in 
Cuba  and  1,000,000  in  Porto  Rico,  with  many 
in  other  sections  of  Spanish  North  America, — 
more  than  23,000,000  souls  in  our  Samaria! 
That  is  more  than  there  were  in  the  United 
States  no  longer  ago  than  when  Abraham 
Lincoln  was  born.  In  some  of  this  vast  terri- 
tory, they  are  thinly  scattered,  but  in  other 
places  they  are  clustered  together  more  closely 
than  people  anywhere  else  on  the  western  hem- 
isphere, outside  of  cities.  Seventy-five  per 
cent  of  the  people  in  Porto  Rico  are  agricul- 
turalists, and  yet  they  are  closer  together 
than  human  beings  are  anywhere  else 
in  the  western  hemisphere  except  in  one 
country.  That  one  country  is  also  in  our 
Samaria.  It  is  the  Republic  of  El  Salvador, 
where,  though  this  is  agricultural,  too,  the 
people  are  packed  together,  five  times  more 
closely  than  they  are  in  the  United  States. 
Belgium  is  famous  for  being  densely  peopled, 
but  Belgium,  someone  has  said,  is  not  a 
country,   it   is   the   manufacturing  center   of 


80  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

Europe.  These  Spanish-American  thickly 
populated  regions  are  not  manufacturing  cen- 
ters, but  are  agricultural  regions,  where  human 
beings  are  gathered  in  swarms. 

Now,  having  thought  of  the  nearness  of  our 
Samaria,  and  the  greatness  of  our  Samaria, 
let  us  look  at  the  capabilities  of  our  Samari- 
tans, the  Spanish  North  Americans.  When 
you  visit  those  countries  you  may  find 
numerous  ruins  of  civilization  there,  showing 
human  attainments  greatly  superior  in  some 
respects, — not  in  all  respects  nor  in  the  most 
important  respects,  yet  in  some  respects — 
decidedly  in  advance  of  the  average  civilization 
of  the  United  States  in  the  twentieth  century  ; 
a  civilization  established  in  those  lands  before 
the  Three  Wise  Men  w^ent  to  find  the  cradle  in 
Bethlehem.  Such  ruins  are  scattered  at  vari- 
ous points.  I  have  visited  some  of  them  that 
are  beautiful  beyond  words  to  express.  What 
does  that  show  ?  We  are  in  the  habit  of  saying 
that  in  the  tropics  you  cannot  expect  much  of 
the  people;  that  it  is  in  the  temperate  zones 
that  high  types  of  humanity  are  developed; 
that  in  the  tropical  and  semi-tropical  regions 
there  is  something  that  prevents  high  attain- 
ment. That  is  why  we  need  to  think  of  the 
history  and  remember  that  the  highest  develop- 


National  Neighborhood  81 

ment  of  the  human  race  on  the  western 
hemisphere  was  there,  on  that  platform,  rather 
than  here  on  the  platform  where  we  stand. 

If  any  one  is  inclined  to  say,  That  is  too  long 
ago  to  affect  our  estimate  of  the  present  inhab- 
itants of  Spanish  North  America,  then  look 
at  some  of  those  people  now.  Senator  Elihu 
Root  is  no  demagogue.  He  is  a  scholarly 
statesman.  On  one  occasion,  when  he  was 
Secretary  of  State,  he  said  that  there  are  two 
men  now  living  on  our  planet  who  are  best 
worth  knowing  because  of  what  they  have 
done  for  humanity.  One  of  those  two  is  Pres- 
ident Porfirio  Diaz  of  Mexico.  Yellow  jour- 
nalism was  inclined  to  disparage  Diaz,  but  in 
the  last  few  months  the  whole  world  has  been 
convinced  that  he  was  the  man  who  for  a  gen- 
eration held  Mexico  up  to  a  high  and  ever  ris- 
ing standard  of  civilization.  Recent  history 
has  wonderfully  justified  the  statement  of  Sec- 
retary Root. 

This  may  be  the  most  eminent  example,  but 
there  are  multitudes  of  men  and  women  in 
Spanish  America  of  splendid  capabilities  intel- 
lectually and  in  every  way.  They  often  put  us 
to  shame.  I  sat  at  a  table  with  twelve  or  four- 
teen Anglo-Saxons  in  one  of  the  little  cities  of 
Mexico,  not  long  ago — people,  most  of  whom 


82  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

have  lived  there  for  years,  and  who  know  the 
country  well.  They  love  the  United  States, 
and  talk  about  it,  as  all  people  do  when 
they  are  in  a  foreign  land,  longing  to  be  at 
home.  To  change  the  drift  for  a  moment  I 
said,  "  Let  us  think  of  things  in  which  Mexico 
is  better  than  the  United  States, — actually 
better."  I  took  out  a  note  book  and  put  down, 
as  they  named  them  one  after  another,  respects 
— a  long  list  of  them — in  which  Mexico  is 
better  than  our  own  glorious  country.  We 
might  dwell  upon  this  greatly  to  our  advantage 
in  striving  to  come  into  the  spirit  of  Jesus  in 
respect  to  our  national  neighbors. 

But  we  must  pass  on  to  note  the  spiritual 
needs  of  these  neighbors.  Why  should  we  take 
the  Gospel  to  these  brilliant  people  in  their 
glorious  countries  ?  For  one  reason,  they  need 
that  factor  which  more  than  any  other  one  fac- 
tor has  made  Anglo-Saxon  America  what  it  is, 
in  contrast  with  Spanish  America. 

When  our  forefathers  came  over  to  Ply- 
mouth, to  New  Amsterdam,  to  Virginia,  most 
of  them  had  a  book  in  their  hands,  sixty-six 
pamphlets  bound  together  in  the  most  won- 
derful literature  that  the  world  ever  has  seen 
collected.  We  call  it  the  Bible.  Many  of  them 
had  this  Book  in  their  hearts  as  well  as  in  their 


National  Neighborhood  83 

hands.  i\Il  of  them,  whether  they  had  the  book 
in  their  hearts  or  in  their  hands,  had 
a  great  amount  of  it  in  their  heads.  That  was 
true  even  in  those  parts  of  the  country  where 
they  used  the  prayer  book  more  than  the  Bible ; 
for  nine-tenths  of  the  phraseology  in  the  Eng- 
lish prayer  book  is  composed  of  scriptural 
phrases.  Their  whole  intellectual  life  was 
framed  on  the  Scriptures.  Even  the  people 
who  repudiated  religion,  thought  along  bibli- 
cal lines,  had  biblical  ideas,  used  biblical 
phrases.  Their  whole  intellectual  equipment 
came  out  of  the  Bible.  More  than  any  other 
one  factor,  that  is  what  has  made  Anglo-Saxon 
America  as  good  as  it  is.  The  worst  tendencies 
among  us  are  due  to  loss  of  biblical  ideals. 

The  Spanish-American  pioneers  came  with- 
out Bibles.  The  few  that  they  did  have  were 
in  Latin.  Speaking  in  a  general  way,  the  Span- 
ish-Americans did  not  bring  Bibles.  They 
came  with  swords  and  cut  their  way  relent- 
lessly to  rule.  A'  sword  in  one  hand  and  a 
rosary  in  the  other!  The  difference  between 
the  Anglo-Saxon  civilization  on  this  continent 
and  the  Spanish-American  civilization,  is  due 
in  large  part  to  that  initiative  difference. 

'As  I  intimated  a  moment  ago,  we  have  much 
to  learn  from  them.    Their  courtesy  often  puts 


84  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

to  shame  our  inconsiderateness.  Like  that 
Samaritan  in  the  time  of  Jesus  who  came  back 
to  say  "  Thank  you,"  our  Samaritans  are  apt 
to  say  "  Many  thanks,"  Muchas  Gracias.  There 
are  other  things,  not  a  few,  which  they  have  to 
teach  us,  but  we  have  to  give  them  the  New 
Testament.  That  is  the  best  gift  we  have  for 
any  neighbor. 

Spanish  America  needs  stabiHty — stabiUty 
in  home  and  in  state.  It  has  been  said  that 
Secretary  Knox  on  visiting  Central  America 
was  treated  with  special  courtesy  in  that  revolu- 
tions were  suspended  while  he  was  present.  A 
man  said  to  me  in  Central  America  a  few 
months  ago, — an  American  alien  whose  home 
is  there — "  In  my  thirty  years  in  this  country 
I  have  seen  seventeen  revolutions."  An  Eng- 
lishman who  has  lived  eighteen  years  in  Cen- 
tral America,  has  repeatedly  visited  all  the 
republics  and  knows  them  well,  remarked  inci- 
dentally "  Costa  Rica  is  a  splendid,  progressive 
country,  far  more  stable  than  most  of  these 
republics;  she  has  not  had  a  single  revolution 
for  twelve  years."  Twelve  whole  years  with- 
out a  revolution!    a  remarkable  achievement! 

Spanish  American  instabihty  is  not  more 
marked  in  national  life,  than  it  is  in  home  life. 
In  this  land  of  divorces  we  are  not  in  a  position 


National  Neighborhood  85 

to  fling  stones  at  our  neighbors.  In  Spanish 
America  there  are  multitudes  of  men  and 
women  who  Hve  pure  and  noble  lives.  Many 
homes  there  are  models  of  domestic  peace  and 
stability.  Conflicting  marriage  laws  of  church 
and  state  with  exorbitant  marriage  fees 
account  for  much  that  is  irregular  in  domestic 
establishment.  But  when  all  allowances  are 
made  and  generously  made,  all  who  know  the 
facts  in  the  case  and  who  care  for  social  mo- 
rality must  sadly  admit  that  the  situation  is 
indescribably  bad.  The  deepest  need  in  our 
Samaria  is  of  the  same  kind  that  Jesus  found 
in  ancient  Samaria  and  pointed  out  so  unmis- 
takably to  the  Samaritan  woman  at  Jacob's 
well. 

The  hospitable  mayor  of  a  Central  American 
city  handed  me  the  published  annual  report 
of  the  various  departments  of  his  municipality. 
The  table  of  births  gave  the  number  of  "  legiti- 
mate" and  "illegitimate."  The  latter  were 
seventy-one  out  of  every  one  hundred.  In  the 
capital  of  the  same  republic  the  percentage  was 
seventy-three.  As  carefully  noted  above,  these 
figures  do  not  signify  what  the  same  figures 
would  in  the  United  States.  We  may  believe 
that  true  marriage  without  legal  sanction  takes 
place  much  oftener  in  Spanish  America  than  in 


86  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  United  States.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
popular  customs  are  such  that  even  where  the 
legal  forms  have  been  observed  the  common 
standards  require  less  than  with  us,  so  that 
well-informed  students  believe  that  the  offi- 
cial figures  do  not  exaggerate  the  actual  state 
of  immorality.  It  is  obvious  that  there  is  a 
perilous  condition  in  republics  where  from 
twenty  to  seventy  of  every  hundred  children 
are  brought  into  the  common  life  outside  the 
sanction  of  organised  society.  The  seriousness 
of  the  situation  is  fearfully  accentuated  if — 
as  is  commonly  believed  in  those  countries — 
many  of  the  representatives  of  the  dominant 
church  participate  in  the  immorality. 

Mr.  Wm.  T.  Stead,  founder  of  the  English 
Review  of  Reviews,  published  a  book  a  few 
years  ago  in  which  he  said  that  "  the  morality 
of  many  of  the  priests  in  Spanish  America 
left  so  much  to  be  desired  that  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  talk  some  years  ago  at  the  Vatican  of 
the  necessity  for  such  an  exercise  of  the  Pope's 
authority  as  would  suspend  for  a  time  the 
enforced  celibacy  of  the  clergy  which  had  pro- 
duced, not  chastity,  but  almost  universal  con- 
cubinage." Just  before  Mr.  Stead  sailed  for 
America  on  the  Titanic,  in  answer  to  an  inquiry 
about  that  statement,  he  wrote  me,  "  The  state- 


National  Neighborhood  87. 

ment  concerning  the  priests  in  South  America 
I  can  vouch  for  with  my  own  knowledge,  for 
it  was  a  subject  of  common  talk  when  I  was 
in  Rome  in  1899,  but  I  do  not  know  that  any- 
thing was  ever  officially  published  on  the  sub- 
ject." Of  course  nothing  of  that  kind  would 
be  officially  published.  As  to  pervasive  social 
corruption  in  Spanish  North  America,  it  is 
doubtful  if  any  honest  man  conversant  with 
the  actual  situation,  can  be  found,  whatever  his 
creed,  who  would  not  admit  that  the  corrup- 
tion is  so  serious  that  the  conditions  cannot  be 
adequately  described  without  using  the  word 
"  rotten." 

It  is  possible  that  the  instability  of  mother 
earth  in  Central  America,  the  land  of  earth- 
quakes, along  with  other  conditions  of  physical 
geography,  may  have  had  something  to  do  with 
the  development  of  social  instability.  That  is 
a  mere  speculation.  But  it  is  perfectly  certain 
that  domestic  instability  in  the  home  has  much 
to  do  with  domestic  instability  in  the  state. 
The  center  of  social  equilibrium  is  the  home. 
When  that  is  shaky  all  society  totters. 

In  Central  America  I  talked  with  a  trusted 
Scotchman  so  trustworthy  that  English  cap- 
italists had  entrusted  him  with  their  capital  for 
years  in  India,  where  he  managed  great  enter- 


88  Elemental  Forces  In  Home  Missions 

prises.  Later  he  was  in  South  America  in 
charge  of  an  English  railroad  enterprise  there. 
When  I  met  him  he  was  in  Spanish  North 
America,  having  been  at  the  head  of  great 
English  business  undertakings  in  two  different 
republics  on  this  side  of  our  Panama  canal. 
He  had  had  large,  intimate  experience  in 
Spanish  America,  both  North  and  South,  and 
in  old  heathen  India.  When  I  said  to  him,  Is 
there  any  need  of  the  kind  of  work  that  one 
of  these  home  missionary  societies  would  do 
if  it  came  into  Central  America?  this  trusted 
Scotch  business  man  said,  "  The  need  is  greater 
here  than  anywhere  else  on  earth." 

The  spiritual  needs,  then,  of  our  nearest 
national  neighbors  are  profoundly  serious.  The 
next  question  is  whether  they  will  welcome 
neighborly  help  from  us.  At  times  and  among 
some  there  is  great  fear  of  us.  Others  long 
for  such  close  political  connection  as  may  in- 
sure at  least  commercial  stability.  Secretary 
Knox  has  assured  the  Central  Americans  that 
the  United  States  does  not  want  another  inch 
of  their  territory.  It  would  be  unspeakably 
deplorable  for  us  to  have  on  our  hands  any  part 
of  the  region  between  the  Rio  Grande  and  the 
Canal  Zone. 

All  that  aside,  there  Is  an  ample  welcome 


jVational  Neighborhood  89 

for  us  in  the  discharge  of  neighborhood  obli- 
gation. 

President  Barrios,  of  the  Republic  of  Gua- 
temala, came  to  New  York  City  years  ago 
looking  for  Protestant  missionaries.  Provi- 
dentially he  was  directed  to  the  Presbyterian 
Board.  He  knew  that  the  religion  which  is 
founded  on  the  Bible  is  essential  to  a  strong, 
democratic  government,  so  he  came  here  to 
find  men  who  would  bring  it.  That  action  is 
typical  of  the  spirit  of  many  patriotic  leaders. 

I  have  intimated  that  the  fundamental  evil 
in  our  Samaria  is  the  same  that  Jesus  met  in 
old  Samaria.  In  a  little  chapel  in  Porto  Rico, 
I  talked  with  one  of  the  leading  citizens  of  the 
town,  a  gray  haired  man.  He  said  to  me,  *'  I 
used  to  like  to  come  here  and  hear  your  mis- 
sionary preach,  but  after  a  while  the  message 
went  down  deeper  than  before  into  my  heart, 
and  I  decided  to  follow  Jesus  Christ  and 
become  a  Christian  myself."  He  said,  "  My 
son  and  daughter,  my  son  26  years  old  and 
my  daughter  24,  were  here  in  the  chapel  and 
their  mother.  She  gave  her  heart  to  Christ 
when  I  did  mine."  Then,  I  wish  you  could 
have  seen  the  smile  on  that  old  man's  face, 
as  he  said,  "  Within  half  an  hour  after  we 
became  disciples  of  Christ,  we  arranged  to  be 


90  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

married."  The  son  and  daughter  were  the 
best  man  and  woman  at  the  marriage  of  their 
parents ! 

They  receive  the  gospel  when  we  bring  it, 
and  it  goes  to  the  root  of  the  trouble  in  Spanish 
America,  and  uproots  it.  It  brings  heahng  to 
our  Samaria,  as  Christ  coming  to  the  old 
Samaria  brought  heahng  there. 

A  dozen  years  ago  there  were  no  Evangehcal 
Christians  in  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico,  and  to-day 
there  are  twenty  thousand.  In  the  Roman 
Catholic  Episcopal  palace,  in  one  of  the  capitals 
of  Spanish  North  America,  the  Roman  Catholic 
bishop  said  to  me,  a  Baptist  missionary,  "  You 
are  welcome  here  and  you  are  needed.  For 
four  hundred  years  Spain  sent  priests  over 
here  who  were  not  wanted  in  Spain.  Such  men 
never  could  Christianize  any  land."  Remem- 
ber, I  am  quoting  the  words  of  the  bishop  to 
me.  "  The  consequence  is,  this  country  was 
never  Christianized  and  there  is  room  for  all  of 
us  here.  You  are  doing  the  country  good  and 
are  stimulating  our  Church  to  do  better  work." 

This  noble  utterance  is  a  fitting  introduction 
to  the  final  chapter  of  our  study,  that  on  co- 
operation of  the  Christianizing  forces. 


yi 

Cooperative  Action 

WE  have  seen  that  great  genetic  forces 
are  operating  to  develop  the  king- 
dom of  God  in  America.  We 
come  now  to  the  supreme  necessity  in  the  case. 

The  Kingdom  of  God  is  not  a  physical 
mechanism  but  a  spiritual  organism.  Its  essen- 
tials are  a  Spirit,  a  Principle,  a  Process,  a 
Law,  a  Consummation,  a  Substance  and  a 
Method. 

The  Spirit  is  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  The  Prin- 
ciple is  the  principle  of  service.  The  Process 
is  the  process  of  growth.  The  Law  is  the  law 
of  justice.  The  Consummation  is  discriminat- 
ing love.  The  Substance  is  personal  fellow- 
ship and  the  Method  is  the  method  of  co- 
operation. 

Of  these  seven  aspects  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  on  Earth  the  first  is  most  essential. 
The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  Earth  never  has 
91 


92  Elemental  Forces  m  Home  Missions 

existed,  it  never  can  exist,  except  to  the  extent 
that  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  prevails.  That  is  the 
essential  strength  of  the  leaders  of  the  King- 
dom everywhere,  before  Christ  as  well  as  since 
— for  "  our  fathers  did  all  drink  the  same 
spiritual  drink,  for  they  drank  of  a  spiritual 
rock  that  followed  them  and  the  rock  was 
Christ."  Where  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  prevails 
the  principle  of  service  rules  inevitably.  The 
process  of  growth  is  the  process  of  life  which 
the  Master  so  carefully  expounded  in  his  par- 
ables and  which  is  now  accepted  as  the  great 
law  of  life  under  the  name  of  evolution.  Justice 
is  fundamental,  as  love  is  supreme.  In  the 
present  study  we  confine  attention  simply  to 
the  Method  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on 
Earth  not  undertaking  to  discuss  the  more 
important  elements  of  that  Kingdom,  the 
Spirit,  the  principle,  the  process,  the  law,  the 
consummation  and  the  substance  of  the 
Kingdom. 

The  true  Method  of  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  on  Earth  is  Cooperation.  The 
chief  methods  proposed  in  opposition  to  the 
true  method  are  anarchy  and  monarchy. 
Anarchy  is  only  an  ideal.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
it  is  an  impossibility.  Those  who  propose  it, 
like   the   political    anarchists,    the    Plymouth 


Cooperative  Action  93 

Brethren  and  other  small  sects  of  ecclesiastical 
anarchists,  come  nowhere  near  their  ideal  in 
practice.  Their  existence  as  a  force  in  the  world 
is  accurately  measured  by  the  degree  of  their 
departure  from  anarchy,  that  is,  by  the  amount 
of  cooperation  which  they  practise. 

Monarchism,  however,  cannot  be  dismissed 
so  easily.  It  has  been  the  prevailing  practice 
of  the  human  race.  Under  various  names  and 
in  a  thousand  degrees  of  greater  or  less  com- 
pleteness it  is  in  vogue.  Absolute  monarchy, 
so-called,  may  not  exist  anywhere  on  earth  now 
except  possibly  in  Siam  and  Afghanistan.  In 
the  form  of  oligarchies  it  rules  almost  every- 
where, not  only  in  Romanism  but  in  most  of 
the  other  great  sects  of  the  church,  not  only  in 
Russia  but  in  the  United  States.  A  part  of  the 
people  are  determined  to  rule  the  rest.  What 
a  time  "  the  better  half  "  of  the  English  people 
and  of  the  American  people  is  having  to  get 
on  a  basis  of  cooperation  with  the  worse  half 
instead  of  staying  in  political  subjection  to 
the  worse  half ! 

Competition  is  a  passing  form  of  monarch- 
ism. It  is  the  strenuous  endeavor  to  rule.  The 
competition  may  be  mainly  brutal  or  mainly 
artful;  the  principle  is  the  same.  It  rests  on 
the  survival  of  the  savage.     It  is  weighed  in 


94  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  balance  and  found  wanting.  Compe- 
tition, seeing  the  handwriting  on  the  wall,  is 
now  seeking  a  sort  of  apotheosis  in  the  cult 
of  the  superman. 

One  method  of  efficiency  which  is  often  put 
in  contrast  with  competition  is  in  reality  the 
consummation  of  competition, — combination. 
The  most  subtle  form  of  monarchism  at  pres- 
ent, now  that  the  older  forms  are  vanishing, 
is  the  craving  for  consolidation.  In  the  bus- 
iness world  consolidation  is  the  famous  method 
now-a-days  and  is  accentuated  by  many 
attempts  to  make  it  infamous.  In  the  church 
consolidation  is  the  glowing  ideal  of  a  multi- 
tude of  noble  brethren  who  long  for  ecclesias- 
tical solidarity.  In  the  state  it  is  the  glowing 
ideal  of  a  swelling  host  of  heroic  souls  who 
long  for  politico-industrial  socialism.  Consol- 
idation is  the  fascinating  goal  before  the  eager 
vision  of  the  present  moment.  But  at  its  heart 
lurks  the  world-old  method  of  efficiency — 
COMPULSION.  Hence  it  is  that  we  need  to 
study  as  never  before  the  Method  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  on  Earth,— COOPERATION. 

It  should  be  fully  acknowledged,  that 
the  method  of  compulsion  has  tremendous 
efficiencies.  If  the  compellers  could  always 
be  perfect  and  the  compelled  could  be  com- 


Cooperative  Action  95 

pletely  compelled,  that  method  would  have 
matchless  advantages.  The  single  disadvan- 
tage would  be  the  abolition  of  freedom.  About 
that  point,  freedom  of  the  will,  past  genera- 
tions bothered  themselves  a  great  deal.  We 
are  fond  of  calling  it  a  dead  issue.  There  are 
indications,  however,  that  it  is  only  a  case  of 
metempsychosis.  On  this  old  question  of  free- 
dom of  the  will  it  is  hardly  possible  for  the 
most  up-to-date  man  to  sit  on  the  fence.  Mod- 
ern materialism  is  down  on  the  same  side  of 
the  fence  with  ancient  supralapsarianism. 
Strangely  enough,  Ernest  Haeckel  and  Jona- 
than Edwards  lean  the  same  way. 

Our  theme  brings  us  dangerously  near 
another  eternal  issue  which  is  parading  under 
a  new  name,  Monism — a  name  so  portentous 
that,  like  the  name  of  the  Deity,  one  is  tempted 
in  pronouncing  it  to  prolong  the  sound  of 
the  o. 

Evidently  our  theme  is  on  the  margin  of 
deep  seas.  Even  if  the  waves  are  too  tempting 
for  us  to  quite  stay  out,  we  must  not  plunge 
in  beyond  our  depth.  The  beach  has  a  long 
slope.  We  can  wade  around  safely  keeping 
our  feet  all  the  time  on  the  ground.  But  while 
we  only  play  in  the  shallows,  we  may  get  some 
whiffs  of  ozone  from  the  boundless  ocean.    A 


96  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

little  briny  mist  in  our  eyes  might  strengthen 
them. 

We  can  avoid  all  perils  of  being  unduly 
speculative  or  discourteously  original,  if  we 
keep  as  well  as  we  can  to  the  inductive  way. 
We  get  the  widest  platform  on  which  to  study 
Cooperation  as  the  Method  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  on  Earth  when  we  observe  that  co- 
operation is  the  method  of  efficiency  in  all 
God's  kingdoms. 

Cooperation  is  the  method  of  efficiency  in 
the  Mineral  Kingdom.  That  kingdom  is 
controlled  by  neither  anarchy  nor  monarchy. 
Of  course  not  by  anarchy!  the  physical  uni- 
verse is  not  a  chaos  but  a  cosmos.  How  about 
monarchy  in  the  mineral  kingdom  ?  There  has 
been  a  tremendous  drift  of  thought  for  a  gen- 
eration or  two  in  the  direction  of  monism. 
Though  not  so  many  have  been  able  to  con- 
ceive matter  and  mind  both  as  one,  it  has  been 
assumed  by  almost  everybody  that  each  one 
of  those  two  is  by  itself  a  unit.  It  is  a  fascin- 
ating conception.  It  is  almost  one  of  the 
pieties  of  thought.  With  many  it  is,  indeed, 
a  fetish,  one  of  the  absolutes.  All  matter  is 
essentially  one.  In  spite  of  the  overwhelming 
drift  of  thought  assuming  unity,  the  examina- 
tion of  the  facts  in  the  case  has  gone  on  dis- 


Cooperative  Action  97 

covering  more  and  more  plurality.  The  text- 
book on  chemistry  which  men  still  in  the  prime 
of  life  used  in  college  enumerated  63  chemical 
elements.  All  matter  was  constructed  by  com- 
binations of  these  few.  Has  the  progress  of 
science  diminished  the  number?  On  the  con- 
trary it  has  increased  them.  Eighty-one  is  the 
smallest  number  named  by  any  chemist  now; 
83  are  commonly  listed.  In  addition  to  those 
which  are  clearly  above  the  horizon,  others  are 
dawning.  Dr.  Alexander  Smith,  head  of  the 
department  of  chemistry  in  Columbia  Univer- 
sity, writes  me  as  follows :  "  In  addition  to 
the  above,  it  is  found  that  uranium,  radium 
and  thorium  decompose,  giving  additional  ele- 
ments. The  number  of  such  elements  as  given 
by  Soddy  in  his  recent  book,  191 1,  is  about  30. 
Whether  the  products  of  these  three  different 
parent  elements  are  all  different  or  include 
duplicates  is  not  yet  known." 

Evidently  the  farther  we  go  in  the  study  of 
matter  the  more  its  ultimate  constitution 
appears  in  the  plural  number  instead  of  the 
singular.  The  material  universe  is  composite. 
There  are  some  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand kinds  of  matter.  They  are  all  composed 
by  the  cooperation  of  four  or  five  scores  of 
elements.    The  speculative  hypothesis  that  the 


98  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

elemental  atoms  are  but  varying  systems  of 
electrons  has  the  fascination  which  all  monistic 
speculations  possess.  How  dazzling  the  thought 
that  everything  is  electricity!  It  is  the  more 
dazzling  because  no  one  pretends  to  know  what 
electricity  really  is.  But  scientific  imagination 
— allowing  for  a  moment  that  the  most  specula- 
tive imagination  may  be  called  scientific — 
when  given  unlimited  liberty  conceives  elec- 
trons as  only  the  negative  pole  of  the  atoms. 
.What  is  the  positive  pole? 

Coming  back  from  the  realm  of  near- 
metaphysics,  from  the  aeroplane  flights  of 
physics,  to  solid  ground,  the  surest  thing  about 
the  Mineral  Kingdom  is  that  all  its  marvels 
and  splendors  are  produced  by  cooperation  of 
elements.  They  mix  and  mingle  in  no  end  of 
combinations.  But  the  ultimate  particles  are 
forever  separate,  discrete,  individual.  The 
particles  of  a  single  substance  even  are  only 
united,  they  are  not  a  unit.  They  stand  out 
and  apart,  each  one  by  itself,  presenting 
a  common  front  to  the  world  because  they 
move  together  as  one  harmonious  whole.  The 
particles  of  solid  gold  are  so  far  apart  that  a 
substance  as  compact  as  mercury  can  work  its 
way  in  between  the  particles  of  gold  and  with- 
out crowding  them  apart  in  the  slightest  degree 


Cooperative  Action  99 

or  expanding  the  mass,  yet  add  substantially 
to  its  weight. 

The  ultimate  materials  of  which  any  sub- 
stance is  composed  are  infinitesimal  galaxies 
of  molecules  and  the  molecules  themselves 
are  atomic  solar  systems.  They  swing 
along  through  space  together  under  common 
laws,  in  one  kingdom.  The  vast  energies 
operating  throughout  the  physical  universe  are 
closely,  intimately,  cooperant,  making  it  indeed 
a  universe.  This  is  the  Method  of  Efficiency 
in  the  Mineral  Kingdom  of  God. 

Passing  to  the  next  realm  of  God,  where 
life  begins.  Cooperation  is  the  Method  of  Effi- 
ciency in  the  Vegetable  Kingdom.  No  plant 
liveth  unto  itself.  Every  plant  is  in  genetic 
relation  with  a  whole  series.  It  is  in  the 
momentous  position  of  being  both  offspring 
and  progenitor.  It  has  a  distinct,  individual 
life.  There  may  be  no  other  plant  in  the  world 
exactly  like  it  in  every  particular.  Yet  it 
epitomizes  the  type  and  reacts  on  the  type  of 
its  whole  kind.  It  embodies  the  destiny  of  its 
whole  race. 

Speculation,  sometimes,  has  postulated  a 
"  vital  principle,"  as  if  there  were  one  entity 
in  all  living  things.  Science  discards  that  idea. 
It  knows  no  life  except  in  lives.    But  the  lives 


100  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

are  interdependent.  Not  only  is  the  coopera- 
tion lineal,  with  no  genesis  except  biogenesis, 
it  is  also  lateral,  widely  lateral.  It  even  reaches 
from  one  kingdom  of  life  into  another.  Vast 
multitudes  in  the  Vegetable  Kingdom  are  abso- 
lutely dependent  on  members  of  the  Animal 
Kingdom  for  the  most  vital  processes.  Fertil- 
ization itself  takes  place  in  many  plants  only 
through  the  cooperation  of  animal  lives.  Red 
clover,  with  all  that  it  means  for  kine  and  so 
for  human  babies,  survives  from  one  gener- 
ation to  another  only  through  the  ministration 
of  bumblebees. 

This  vital  interrelationship  of  lives  in  two 
kingdoms  is  not  exceptional,  it  is  typical.  It 
has  often  seemed  to  me  that  this  cooperation 
of  our  humble  friends  Bombus  and  Trifolium 
is  the  great  emblem  of  the  universe.  If  you 
were  to  devise  a  coat  of  arms  for  the  chariots 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  Earth,  what 
could  be  more  appropriate  than  a  honey-bee 
couchant  on  a  head  of  white  clover? 

Coming  back  from  this  glance  at  Coopera- 
tion between  kingdoms  international  coopera- 
tion so  to  speak,  the  Method  of  Cooperation  in 
the  Vegetable  Kingdom  by  itself  shows  trium- 
phant tendencies.  Some  plants  put  forth  their 
blossoms  singly,  separately.     Others  combine 


Cooperative  Action  101 

them  in  clusters,  pool  the  issues  of  life,  form 
a  trade  union  of  petals  so  as  to  exert  by  their 
united  bloom  a  more  commanding  influence 
with  the  essential  animal  world.  Early  bota- 
nists called  them  compound  flowers.  They 
have  given  name  to  a  whole  order  of  plants, 
now  called  the  Compositae.  It  is  significant 
that  this  order  of  cooperatives  is  conquering 
the  earth  as  no  other  order  is  doing.  "  Com- 
positae: the  largest  natural  order  of  plants, 
including  over  750  genera  and  10,000  species, 
distributed  all  over  the  globe  wherever 
vegetation  is  found  and  divided  equally  be- 
tween the  old  world  and  the  new."  That  is 
a  scientific  record  of  the  world- winning  Effi- 
ciency of  Cooperation  as  God's  Method  in  the 
Vegetable  Kingdom. 

As  we  ascend  the  scale  of  being,  we  find  the 
Method  of  Cooperation  efficient,  not  only,  as 
below,  in  giving  mass,  variety,  continuity  and 
power  of  survival,  but  also  in  higher  ranges  of 
activity,  evolving  complicated,  sensitive,  sym- 
pathetic nerve-centers  where  intellectual  and 
moral  qualities  have  their  seat.  In  the 
Animal  Kingdom  the  highest  intelligence  is 
developed  by  cooperation.  That  is  true  all  the 
way  from  bees  to  elephants.  The  insect  which 
surrenders  its  individual  life  utterly  to  the  aims 


102  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

of  the  swarm  creates  all  the  honey  of  the 
world.  The  huge  beast  which,  in  spite  of  its 
apparent  clumsiness,  can  do  work  with  almost 
human  efficiency,  has  developed  its  wonderful 
intelligence  not  by  solitary  existence  but  by 
roaming  in  herds.  It  is  the  difference  in  co- 
operative faculty  which  makes  the  whole  genus 
of  dogs  both  domestic  and  wild  so  much  nobler 
than  that  of  cats. 

"Now  this  is  the  law  of  the  jungle — as  old  and 

as  true  as  the  sky ; 
And  the  wolf  that  shall  keep  it  may  prosper, 

but  the  wolf  that  shall  break  it  must  die. 
As  the  creeper  that  girdles  the  tree-trunk  the 

Law  runneth  forward  and  back — 
For  the  strength  of  the  Pack  is  the  wolf,  and 

the  strength  of  the  wolf  is  the  Pack." 

The  chief  mark  of  progress  in  the  human 
race  is  that  it  is  learning  this  old  law  better 
and  better.  Savages  can  live  the  simple  life 
together  only  in  tribes  of  a  few  hundred  souls, 
even  that  little  group  readily  going  to  pieces. 
Civilized  men  can  live  together  in  one  infinitely 
complex  but  closely  cooperative  government  a 
hundred  million  strong.  Here  is  the  table 
which  has  been  worked  out  by  careful  students 
of  the  whole  human  family,  showing  in  four 


Cooperative  Action  103 

stages  of  human  advancement  with  ten  sub- 
stages  the  average  number  of  people  in  248 
races  of  men  who  have  learned  to  live  together 
cooperatively. 

Savages : 

Lower,  average  of  8  races 40 

Middle,  average  of  6  races 150 

Higher,  average  of  33  races. . . .  360 

Barbarians : 

Lower,  average  of  30  races. . . .  6,500 

Middle,  average  of  35  races. . . .        228,000 
Higher,  average  of  61  races. . . .        442,000 

Civilized : 

Lower,  average  of  23  races. . . .     4,200,000 

Middle,  average  of  8  races 5,500,000 

Higher,  average  of  30  races. . . .   24,000,000 

Cultured : 

Lower,  average  of  14  races. . . .   30,000,000 
Middle,  average  of  —  races. . . . 
Higher,  average  of  —  races .... 

The  last  two  steps  in  the  giant  stairway 
from  animal  to  heavenly  human  society  are 
not  yet  built.  But  the  first  ten  are  as  solidly 
laid  in  hard  facts  as  any  scientific  induction 
in  the  realm  of  anthropology  can  be.    The  scale 


104  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

of  human  being  is  marked  by  the  degree  of 
Cooperation  attained. 

Having  obtained  this  widest  inductive  basis 
as  to  the  method  of  efficiency  in  God's  other 
kingdoms  we  are  prepared  to  study  the  matter 
in  hand  more  closely  and  to  see  without  sur- 
prise that  Cooperation  is  the  method  of  effi- 
ciency in  the  Spiritual  Kingdom. 

If  we  plunge  into  the  midst  of  the  spiritual 
history  of  humanity  at  the  point  where  it  re- 
ceives its  greatest  tributary — a  tributary 
greater  than  all  the  preceding  stream  itself  as 
the  tributary  river  from  the  far  heights  of  the 
northern  Rockies  is  mightier  than  even  the 
Father  of  Waters — ^we  may  gain  at  that  point 
the  best  conception  of  the  spiritual  kingdom. 
What  did  Jesus  Christ  himself  mean  by  the 
key-words  of  his  ministry,  Kingdom  of 
Heaven? 

On  the  one  hand  he  did  not  mean  anarchism. 
The  word  *'  Kingdom  "  was  the  only  available 
word  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  people  then  to 
indicate  social  organization  on  a  large  scale. 
He  used  it  in  radically  new  senses,  to  be  sure. 
But  it  could  not  be  used  In  any  sense  without 
meaning  at  least  organized  cooperation.  He 
dwelt  mainly  on  the  important  elements  of  the 
Kingdom  which  we  are  not  studying  at  this 


Cooperative  Action  105 

hour.  He  did  not  go  into  questions  of  the 
method  of  the  Kingdom.  He  left  that  for  us 
to  work  out  in  view  of  the  essential  spirit, 
principle,  process,  law,  consummation  and  sub- 
stance of  the  Kingdoms  of  God  open  to  our 
study  and  in  view  of  the  spiritual  evolution  of 
humanity.  It  is  a  part  of  the  many  things 
which  he  expressly  left  to  the  developing  power 
of  hio  Spirit  in  the  world.  But  his  teaching 
about  the  Kingdom  involves  as  an  irreducible 
minimum  Cooperation. 

The  spirit  of  Jesus  means  cooperation  even 
to  the  extent  of  cooperation  between  the  in- 
finite God  and  human  flesh.  The  principle  of 
service  as  he  unfolded  and  exemplified  it  means 
cooperation  at  all  cost  and  with  all  men,  even 
the  most  unattractive.  The  process  of  growth 
which  so  many  of  his  parables  of  the  Kingdom 
centrally  set  forth  is  a  cooperative  process  be- 
tween earth  and  air,  rain  and  sunshine,  at 
heart  between  a  multitude  of  vital  cells  which 
are  linked  together  as  the  very  form  and  fact 
of  growth.  The  law  of  justice  means  fairness 
in  all  the  relations  of  one  with  another.  Love 
the  consummation  of  the  Kingdom,  is  by  its 
inherent  nature,  cooperative.  The  substance  of 
the  Kingdom,  personal  fellowship,  is  the  very 
soul  of  cooperation.     The  great  essentials  of 


106  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  Earth,  therefore, 
involve  Cooperation  as  their  indispensable 
method. 

On  the  other  hand  the  method  of  the  King- 
dom unfolded  by  Jesus  is  not  compulsion.  It 
is  the  Kingdom  of  God.  The  authority  is  His. 
The  Infinite  is  of  necessity  supreme.  The 
Kingdom  ideally  is  the  perfect  sway  of  the 
unlimited  good,  the  good  God.  The  sover- 
eignty is  far  too  complete  to  be  delegated.  It 
is  absolute  and  unshared.  As  between  finite 
beings  there  is  no  vestige  of  it.  The  assump- 
tion by  men  of  the  place  of  God  In  his  King- 
dom is  the  depth  of  absurdity.  In  a  thousand 
degrees  and  forms  that  assumption  is  common. 
If  it  were  not  the  most  serious  and  primal  sin 
of  the  universe,  it  would  be  the  most  ridiculous 
thing  in  the  universe.  Subjects  mistaking 
themselves  for  the  sovereign!  That  is  the 
great  insanity. 

As  between  man  and  man  nothing  more  than 
cooperation  is  ultimately  possible.  Even  as 
between  man  and  God  Jesus  came  to  establish 
the  method  of  cooperation.  This  is  the  core  of 
the  Gospel.  In  Jesus  of  Nazareth  the  infinite 
and  absolute  has  become  our  comrade,  has 
entered  into  intimate  fellowship  with  us. 

If  we  turn  from  the  history  of  revelation  to 


Cooperative  Action  107 

the  revelation  of  history  we  see  the  same  thing. 
Without  any  question  the  nucleus  of  all  the 
spiritual  development  of  the  human  race  is 
the  family.  There  has  been  born  not  only  the 
life  of  the  body,  but  also  the  life  of  the  spirit 
of  humanity.  Everything  humane  has  been 
generated  there.  Cold-blooded  animals  spawn 
in  m  /riads  and  abandon  their  offspring.  It  is 
the  prolongation  of  the  care  of  offspring  which 
not  only  marks  but  generates  the  sympathetic 
feelings  which  eventuate  in  the  highest  forms 
of  spiritual  tenderness.  The  expansion  of 
family  feeling  into  widening  circles  becomes  at 
last  cosmopolitan  altruism.  All  spiritual  out- 
reach Is  rooted  back  through  nation,  tribe, 
clan  and  gens  in  the  family.  The  patriarch 
is  the  "  father  of  the  faithful."  In  some 
branches  of  race  development  it  is  the  matri- 
arch Instead  of  the  patriarch  who  Is  recognized 
as  the  head.  But  In  all  cases  it  Is  in  fact  both. 
The  root  of  everything  vital  is  not  singular 
but  plural.  It  is  a  pair.  The  foundation  of 
society  is  dual.  Two  cooperate  not  only  In 
making  life  but  In  making  life  worth  while. 
The  story  of  all  that  is  best  In  the  world  is  a 
love  story.  It  is  esesntlally  that  all  the  way 
from  the  simplest  unicellular  forms  of  life, 
which  either  divide  or  commingle  or  both,  in 


108  Elemental  Forces  In  Home  Missions 

order  to  develop,  on  through  the  multicelhilar 
forms  which  are  vast  colonies  of  cooperating 
cells,  on  and  on  until  "  God  so  loved  the 
world."  There  is  a  subject  and  an  object.  The 
uplift  is  always  through  cooperation.  The 
highest  spiritual  attainment  is  never  in  singu- 
larity. In  fact  no  spiritual  activity  can  come 
into  being  except  through  plurality.  The  spirit 
of  man  as  such  does  not  function  except  co- 
operatively. 

This  elemental  force  of  spiritual  history  is 
its  chief  factor  on  every  page  of  that  history. 
The  typical  organization  of  that  force  is  the 
church.  All  other  organizations  of  men,  what- 
ever their  object,  promote  the  activity  of  the 
spirit.  The  church,  instead  of  doing  this  inci- 
dentally, exists  for  the  purpose  of  doing  this. 
This  is  its  reason  for  being.  In  the  church, 
therefore,  the  method  of  cooperation  must  be 
peculiarly  aware  of  itself.  So  it  is  in  one  form 
and  another.  It  is  a  fellowship,  a  brotherhood. 
There  is  no  question  about  that  in  the  local 
groups  of  believers.  But  when  you  go  beyond 
that  to  the  relationship  of  the  local  churches  to 
one  another  you  pass  into  a  realm  of  great 
uncertainty  even  in  this  twentieth  century  of 
Christian  history.    The  uncertainty  pertains  to 


Cooperative  Action  109 

both  interdenominational  relationships  and  to 
the  internal  relationships  of  denominations. 

The  atmosphere  of  thought  about  interde- 
nominational relationship  is  filled  with  mist. 
Collisions  are  frequent  in  spite  of  fog-horns 
which  rend  the  air.  Some  denominations 
spend  a  large  part  of  their  energy  blowing 
about  it. 

Where  the  clouds  are  not  sufficiently  con- 
densed for  thunder  and  lightning  or  any  kind 
of  storm,  there  is  yet  the  pervasive,  chilling 
mist — so  thick  in  some  places  that  you  have 
to  swallow  as  you  advance,  so  thin  in  other 
places  that  you  seem  to  see  distinct  objects 
through  it.  But  they  loom.  Everywhere 
haze,  haze — sometimes  wide  expanse  of  haze 
— with  every  now  and  then  wonderful  mirage. 
In  short,  on  the  subject  of  interdenominational 
relationship,  the  one  reliable  forecast  is 
"  cloudy  and  windy." 

In  all  the  wide  welter,  but  two  ideas  have 
been  sufficiently  distinct  to  be  taken  as  ideals, 
the  idea  of  Consolidation  and  the  idea  of 
Segregation.  Take  the  idea  of  a  single,  uni- 
versal, solidly  organized  Church,  with  every- 
body in  it.  As  an  abstract  idea  that  Is  easily 
grasped.  As  an  ideal  it  is  fascinating  beyond 
the  power  of  words  to  depict.     It  glows  and 


110  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

gleams  and  glitters.  None  but  the  stone-blind 
can  fail  to  look  upon  it  with  charmed  interest. 
Not  only  with  bishops,  archbishops,  cardinals 
and  popes  is  it  the  Dcils  ex  machina,  but  equally 
with  sectarians  of  every  other  title.  The 
thought  of  one  great,  all  inclusive  church 
organization  with  uniform  symbols  of  faith, 
organs  of  devotion,  discipline  of  life  and  goal 
of  ambition,  is  the  ideal,  not  only  of  multitudes 
in  the  several  great  historic  bodies  of  Chris- 
tians, but  also  of  the  majority  in  many  of  the 
smaller,  newer  and,  as  it  seems  to  us,  most 
flighty  groups.  They  have  glowing  expecta- 
tion, born  of  consuming  zeal,  that  their  own 
communion  is  to  become  universal.  For  that 
end  they  live.  For  that  they  think,  even,  that 
they  are  willing  to  die.  There  is  a  great  long- 
ing for  consolidation. 

The  other  ideal,  that  of  Segregation,  is 
also  clear  cut.  A  church  of  Christ  is  a  local 
group  of  agreeing  Christians.  That  is  the  only 
body  with  legislative,  judicial  or  executive 
functions.  Let  its  relations  with  other  such 
groups  be  purely  sentimental  and  in  no  way 
organic.  That  was  the  earlier  view  of  Isaac 
Backus  and  the  majority  of  New  England 
Baptist  churches  which  refused  to  go  into  any 
such  ecclesiastical  machine  as  an  association. 


Cooperative  Action  111 

There  are  scores  of  churches  in  the  South- 
west claiming  to  beHeve  in  missions  which  re- 
gard missionary  societies  as  utterly  wrong. 
When  it  comes  to  interdenominational  relation- 
ship segregation  is  the  ideal  tenaciously  held 
by  vast  multitudes  of  Christians  of  all  names 
in  this  country.  It  is,  indeed,  the  ruling  idea 
between  denominations. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  of  these  ideals 
is  consistenly  held  or  practised  by  any  con- 
siderable number  of  people.  The  so-called 
"  Gospel  Mission  "  churches  which  repudiate 
boards  of  joint  administration  as  the  work  of 
the  devil,  in  trying  to  do  mission  work  together 
have  committees  or  some  kind  of  designated 
groups  of  people  to  look  after  the  work.  There 
is  no  possibility  of  doing  anything  beyond  the 
reach  of  one's  own  presence  without  some  kind 
of  cooperative  understanding.  Difference  of 
vocabulary  in  describing  it  does  not  overcome 
the  necessity  or  change  the  reality. 

On  the  other  hand  the  bodies  which  cherish 
the  idea  of  consolidation  most  insistently  are 
frequently  the  ones  who  segregate  themselves 
most  exclusively  from  their  brethren  of  other 
denominations.  Even  within  their  own  de- 
nomination their  solidarity  is  more  theoretical 
than  actual.    A  minister  in  one  of  the  denom- 


112  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

inations  which  dotes  most  on  solidarity,  when 
asked  if  they  did  not  have  within  the  one 
Church  so-called,  three  sections  virtually  as 
distinct  as  sects  outside,  replied,  "  Not  three 
but  nine." 

Not  only  are  both  of  the  opposite  ideas  mod- 
ified out  of  all  semblance  of  consistency  in 
practice,  but  both  also  are  held  mainly  by  the 
same  people.  The  staunchest  advocates  of 
independency  are  the  most  enthusiastic  believ- 
ers that  everything  will  be  swallowed  up  in 
independency.  On  the  other  side  the  strongest 
advocates  of  all-inclusive  unity  are  the  most 
exclusive  in  practice. 

So  here  we  are,  away  down  into  the  twen- 
tieth century,  with  but  two  well  defined,  widely 
held  ideas  of  the  church  universal,  neither  of 
them  practised  by  anybody,  neither  of  them, 
in  fact,  practicable.  Is  it  not  time  for  a  new 
ideal?  Is  it  not  time  to  frankly  discard  both 
the  old,  tenderly  cherished  but  forever  unwork- 
able ideals  and  openly  to  put  in  their  place  an 
entirely  different  conception  from  either  of 
these  ? 

That  it  is  time  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
churches  are  groping  after  the  new  ideal,  are 
engaged  in  seventy-seven  "  movements,"  more 
or  less,  feeling  along  new  lines.     The  time  is 


Cooperative  lA^ction  113 

ripe  for  sharp  definition  of  the  new  ideal,  for 
getting  it  into  simple  shape  where  everyone 
can  see  it  and  lay  hold  of  it  and  be  certain  that 
he  is  no  longer  under  the  spell  either  of  soli- 
darity or  of  segregation.  The  new  ideal  is  not 
a  compromise  between  the  old  ideals,  though 
it  is  a  golden  mean.  As  a  conception  it  has 
as  great  simplicity  as  either  of  the  old  concep- 
tions. As  a  working  ideal  it  is  beset  with  end- 
less difficulties,  but  so  were  the  old  ideals. 
They,  in  fact,  were  nullified  by  their  difficul- 
ties. The  new  ideal  merely  puts  into  clear 
expression  what  has  been  the  actual  working 
principle  under  the  old  nominal  ideas. 

The  word  which  sets  forth  the  new  ideal 
better  than  any  other  single  word  is  coming 
into  use  instinctively  more  and  more.  It  is 
the  word  COOPERATION.  All  God's  people 
are  to  work  together — are  to  work  together. 

All  cannot  sing  together — some  want  ora- 
torios while  others  want  jingles.  All  cannot 
think  together — some  demand  logic  while 
others  demand  imagination.  All  cannot  poli- 
tize  together — some  require  a  rigid  church 
mechanism,  while  others  require  measureless 
flexibility.  Ritual  forms,  creedal  forms, 
ecclesiastical  forms,  never  can  be  uniforms  for 
all.     God  is  too  great,  his  galaxies  are  too 


114   Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

vast.  We  can  not  formulate  him  at  once.  But 
we  can  perform  his  work  in  our  world.  "  He 
that  doeth  good  is  of  God."  That  is  the  last 
word  on  the  last  page  of  the  last  apostle.  The 
consummation  of  godliness  is  doing  good.  In 
the  conception  of  John,  the  beloved,  the  whole 
story  condenses  into  that.  When  we  come  to 
this  ultimate  experience,  this  result  of  last 
analysis,  this  elemental  simplicity,  this  final 
reality,  we  are  all  together.  We  do  not  have 
to  get  together,  we  are  together.  Our  hearts 
are  one  on  that.  In  other  matters  there  are 
many  rival  forms  and  lines.  But  when  the 
wireless  S.  O.  S.  pulsates  through  the  air  all  put 
the  helm  down  hard  for  concentration,  unity 
of  effort. 

The  end  of  church  life  is  not  church  life, 
but  human  hfe,  the  life  of  God  in  man,  "  the 
human  life  of  God."  Our  chief  desire,  our 
very  foremost  petition,  is  that  the  will  of  God 
may  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven.  Doing 
Christ's  work  together  is  not  only  along  the 
line  of  highest  obligation,  it  is  also  along  the 
line  of  least  resistance.  We  have  not  a  tithe 
of  the  difficulty  in  doing  practical  work  with 
our  fellow  disciples  that  we  have  in  theoriz- 
ing with  them.  Work  is  elemental  and  simple. 
People  who  could  not  use  the  same  ritual  with 


Cooperative  Action  115 

any  degree  of  satisfaction  iand  who  could  not 
honestly  recite  the  same  creed,  can  do  practical 
work  together  without  hesitation  and  without 
compromise.  In  many  lines  of  service  Jews 
and  Roman  Catholics  gladly  work  with  Prot- 
estants. The  whole  experience  of  men  in  the 
necessities  of  daily  life,  in  manufactory,  trade 
and  transportation,  trains  them  in  doing  things 
together  regardless  of  differences.  It  comes 
about  therefore  happily  that  work  together,  co- 
operation, is  the  easiest  as  well  as  the  most 
important  margin  of  contact  with  our  fellow 
Christians. 

Doing  the  will  of  God,  is  the  only  all- 
important  thing.  If  that  be  accomplished  other 
things  are  of  too  little  consequence  to  matter 
much.  But  if  you  thought  differently  and  set 
great  store  by  ecclesiastical  formularies  of  one 
kind  and  another  to  which  all  men  should  be 
brought,  you  would  expect  the  best  success  in 
that  by  first  getting  them  to  work  together. 
Cooperaton  is  the  strategic  point  in  the  inter- 
est of  unity  at  all  points.  Those  who  try  to 
get  men  to  agree  first  on  a  creed,  a  ritual  or 
any  question  of  ecclesiastical  order  are  begin- 
ning at  the  wrong  end  of  the  problem.  They 
are  putting  the  cart  before  the  horse.  It  is 
sound  psychology  as  well  as  sound  Christianity 


116  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

to  learn  by  doing.  If  men  will  do  the  will,  they 
shall  know  the  doctrine.  It  is  foolish  as  well 
as  futile  to  talk  much  about  church  union  and 
at  the  same  time  stand  off  from  one's  brethren 
in  practical  endeavor.  The  habit  of  doing  that, 
is  common  and  is  nothing  less  than  ridiculous. 
On  the  other  hand  I  have  noticed  bodies  of 
Christians  who  make  no  pretense  of  wanting 
church  union,  so  called,  and  who  yet  are  gen- 
erally found  doing  their  part  in  practical  united 
work. 

From  every  point  of  view  cooperation  is  the 
key  to  interdenominational  relationship.  It  is 
the  new  ideal  which  is  driving  both  of  the  old, 
mutually  conflicting  ideals  off  the  platform. 
The  principle  of  Cooperation  is  now  gathering 
headway  rapidly.  The  last  ten  years  have 
seen  its  practice  augmented  more  than  the  pre- 
vious hundred  years,  perhaps  thousand  years, 
and  in  manifold  ways.  The  last  twelve  months 
have  witnessed  more  than  one  tremendous 
accession  to  the  momentum  of  interdenomina- 
tional cooperation.  One  of  the  recent  accel- 
erations has  been  with  much  rattling  of  broad- 
sides and  firing  of  guns.  Such  things  are  of 
enormous  value  with  average  humanity. 

Another  increase  of  cooperation  which  is 
more  fundamental  and  far-reaching,  has  been 


Cooperative  Action  117 

without  blare  of  trumpets.  The  plans  for  it 
were  laid  out  before  the  Men  and  Religion 
Movement  was  mentioned.  The  Home  Mis- 
sions Council  composed  of  the  administrators 
of  Home  Missions  of  nearly  all  the  great  evan- 
gelical denominations  has  entered  upon  a 
thorough-going,  united  study  of  conditions. 
This  epoch-marking  step  in  cooperation  meets 
the  approval  of  bodies  which  have  no  penchant 
for  consolidation. 

The  Northern  Baptist  Convention  in  19 12 
adopted  the  following  expression  of  opinion: 
"  The  most  important  and  hopeful  movement 
ever  undertaken  for  the  Christianizing  of 
America  seems  to  be  the  cooperative  study 
the  exact  religious  condition  and  needs  of  our 
western  states  which  was  inaugurated  by  the 
series  of  interdenominational  conferences  held 
last  autumn,  which  is  being  continued  by  the 
careful  and  scientific  survey  now  in  progress." 

One  of  the  most  significant  steps  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth,  is  this  deter- 
mination of  the  great  Home  Mission  Societies 
to  face  their  task  together.  The  task  is  the 
Christianization  of  a  continent.  Heretofore 
each  body  has  gone  at  it  almost  regardless  of 
what  the  others  attempted  to  do.  When  that 
method  involved  no  hostility,  even  when  it 


118  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

involved,  as  it  commonly  did  at  heart,  sincere 
appreciation  of  what  the  others  were  doing,  it 
yet  lacked  all  power  of  concerted  action — that 
power  which  makes  the  composite  order  of 
plants  the  most  world-possessing  order,  that 
power  which  makes  the  insects  which  work  in 
swarms  the  most  productive  insects,  that  power 
which  makes  the  animals  which  hunt  in  packs 
the  most  sagacious  animals,  that  power  which 
makes  the  tribesmen  who  learn  to  back  each 
other  up  the  most  numerous  and  wide-ruling, 
that  power  which  makes  two  organized  as  a 
conquering  team  able  to  put  ten  thousand  sep- 
arates to  flight.  Heroic  work,  devoted  work, 
effective  work,  magnificent  work  has  been 
done  b}'^  Home  Mission  forces  acting  with  little 
regard  to  each  other,  except  sentimental 
esteem.  But  at  its  very  best,  that  way  of  work- 
ing was  devoid  of  the  efficiency  which  makes 
a  small  squad  of  cooperating  men  able  to  out- 
maneuver  a  vast  mob  of  merely  sympathetic 
individuals. 

I  heard  a  characteristically  clear,  inescapa- 
ble expression  of  this  principle  made  by  a  rep- 
resentative of  one  of  the  great  denominations 
which  always  has  put  the  greatest  emphasis  on 
independency,  the  distinguished  President  of 
the   Southern   Baptist  Theological   Seminary. 


Cooperative  Action  119 

These  are  President  Mullin's  words :  "  Free- 
dom expresses  itself  in  two  ways  among  others, 
first,  in  the  disposition  to  stand  alone,  and, 
second,  in  the  disposition  to  cooperate.  Many 
seem  to  think  that  the  only  legitimate  expres- 
sion of  freedom  is  in  the  attitude  of  antago- 
nism to  other  people,  as  if  protest  and  refuta- 
tion were  the  only  functions  of  the  free  man. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  more  fundamental  and 
higher  expression  of  freedom  to  cooperate  with 
others.  Individualism  is  not  dependent  upon 
isolation  in  order  to  its  full  expression. 
It  is,  however,  dependent  upon  integration 
with  other  persons  in  order  to  its  complete 
expression.  The  individual  is  incomplete  in 
himself.  It  is  only  in  the  social  organism 
that  he  finds  his  completion.  Baptist  independ- 
ence, therefore,  and  Baptist  freedom  never 
attain  to  maturity  until  they  attain  it  in  co- 
operation with  the  brethren  in  the  common 
ends  and  aims  of  the  Kingdom." 

The  day  of  segregation  within  denomina- 
tions is  passed,  between  denominations  it  is 
passing.  The  day  of  consolidation  has  not 
come,  even  within  denominations, — witness 
'Northern  and  Southern  Methodists,  Baptists 
and  Presbyterians.  Between  denominations 
the  day  of  consolidation  is  not  in  sight.    But 


120  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

the  day  of  cooperation  is  here.  The  sun  is  up. 
It  behooves  us  all  to  be  up  and  doing.  The 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  Earth  can  come  and 
come  swiftly,  if  we  learn  to  use  its  method, 
cooperation. 

It  is  the  only  method  of  modern  alertness. 
It  is  the  only  method  of  wide-reaching  and  per- 
manent efficiency.  In  a  word  it  is  the  only 
method  of  sanity.  The  Superintendent  of  an 
asylum  for  the  insane  was  asked,  "  Are  you 
not  sometimes  afraid  for  your  life  here?  How 
easily  these  hundreds  of  people  might  rise  up 
and  overwhelm  you  and  the  few  attendants." 
"  Oh,  no,"  he  replied.  "  There  is  no  danger 
of  that  whatever.  Insane  people  never 
cooperate." 

The  Method  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on 
Earth  is  Cooperation.  Have  we  proved  it? 
It  does  not  matter  whether  we  have  proved  it 
or  not.  It  is  too  obvious  and  eternal  to  need 
much  proof.  It  simply  needs  to  be  dwelt  upon, 
taken  in  and  worked  out.  Our  task  is  not  to 
prove  it  but  to  do  it.  In  some  directions  that 
means  reconstruction. 

We  have  confined  our  attention  to  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven  on  Earth,  as  well  wo  may  for 
the  most  part.  Yet  it  would  not  be  natural  to 
leave  the  subject  finally  without  any  mention 


Cooperative  Action  121 

of  the  heaven  above  from  which  the  Kingdom 
on  Earth  gets  its  name.  As  I  was  writing 
this  page,  I  heard  a  whirring  in  the  air  and 
hfting  my  eyes  to  the  waters  of  Lake 
Michigan  and  the  sky  above,  I  beheld  a 
great  biplane  sailing  through  the  air.  It  flew 
on  between  the  blue  above  and  the  blue  below, 
wheeled  about,  wheeled  again  and  again,  and 
rising  higher  and  yet  higher  above  the  tallest 
roofs  of  the  giant  city  by  the  lake,  crossed 
my  astonished  horizon  five  times,  then  sailed 
away  southward  till  its  huge  wings  appeared 
to  be  no  more  than  the  pinions  of  a  swallow. 
And  so  it  vanished  in  the  heavens.  When  a 
human  being  in  a  machine  heavier  than  air 
can  do  that  the  most  earthbound  of  us  may 
be  forgiven  for  a  gyration  or  two  above  terra 
firma. 

We  have  looked  into  the  Mineral  Kingdom, 
the  Vegetable  Kingdom,  the  Animal  Kingdom, 
the  Human  Kingdom,  the  Spiritual  Kingdom 
on  earth.  The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  What  is  the  method  of  the 
plural  and  the  singular  there  ?  "  Let  us  make 
man  in  our  own  image,  after  our  likeness." 
*'  Behold,  the  man  is  become  as  one  of  us." 
"  The  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  the 
love  of  God  and  the  communion  of  the  Holy 


122  Elemental  Forces  in  Home  Missions 

Spirit  be  with  you  all !  "  These  ancient  phrases 
in  a  concrete  way  reflect  the  first  and  last 
pages  of  almost  universal  human  thought. 
Duality  is  the  lowest  term  to  which  the  com- 
mon consciousness  of  mankind  has  been  able  to 
reduce  its  conception  of  the  pluralities  of  the 
cosmos.  It  is  a  universe,  but  a  plural  universe. 
Does  any  one  ever  think  of  matter  and  spirit  as 
being  one  and  the  same  thing,  except  by  a 
mental  tour  de  forcef  We  get  that  idea  only 
by  speculating  ourselves  into  it.  We  can  hold 
it  only  by  main  strength. 

Yet  our  hearts  insist  on  unity.  "  The  Lord 
our  God  is  one  Lord."  Every  tendency  of 
modern  thought  sweeps  in  that  direction.  The 
greatest  prayer  ever  uttered  brings  men  with 
God  into  the  supreme  unity.  "  That  they  may 
all  be  one,  even  as  thou.  Father,  art  in  me 
and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be  in 
us."  That  prayer  throws  light  both  Godward 
and  manward.  It  leaves  no  place  anywhere 
for  segregation.  At  the  same  time  it  assumes 
the  very  opposite  of  consolidation.  The  Naz- 
arene  petitioner  and  the  infinite  God  and  the 
included  believers  are  surely  plural.  Their 
unity  in  its  highest  ideal  is  that  of  absolutely 
perfect  and  complete  cooperation. 

Shall  we  take  one  more  swing  into  the  blueii 


Cooperative  Action  123 

How  would  it  feel  to  be  in  heaven?  What  is 
heaven  like?  One  of  the  best  guesses  is  that  it 
feels  like  music.  Is  it  that  we  really  expect 
brass  bands,  or  pianos  or  even  harps  with 
frames  of  gold?  That  cannot  be  what  we 
mean.  Is  not  this  what  we  mean — music  is 
the  finest  emblem  we  have  of  cooperant  forces. 
Segregated  noises  are  the  perdition  of  the 
nerves.  Consolidated  noises  are  the  roar  of 
the  city  which  threatens  our  life  more  than 
Daniel's  was  threatened  by  the  disconcerting 
roar  of  all  the  lions  together.  Music  is  simply 
sounds  transformed  and  transfigured  by  co- 
operation. The  forces  which  segregated  or 
consolidated  are  too  much  for  us,  when  they 
are  marshalled  and  played  together,  each  work- 
ing with  all  and  all  with  each,  become  music, — 
heaven. 

"  Love  took  up  the  harp  of  life  and  smote  on  all 

the  cords  with  might ; 
Smote  the  cord  of  self,  that,  trembling,  pass'd 

in  music  out  of  sight." 


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THE  MINISTER  AND  HIS  WORK 

THIS  ELTON  MARK,  D.Lit. 

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frank:  w.  gunsaulus,  d.d. 


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MISSIONS 


ALICE  M.   GUERNSEY 

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MISSIONS 


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lamo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

"The  hardship,  the  humor,  the  joy,  the  despair  of  city 
■Jssion  work  arc  all  reflected  in  this  chronicle  of  haps  and 
mishaps,  ups  and  downs — a  chronicle  so  well  told  that  the 
reader  will  be  tempted  to  believe  it  fiction  instead  of  tbc 
sstual  record  that  it  \»."^-Chns.  Workers  Magagme. 


Princeton   Theological   Seminary   Libraries 


1    1012   01186  8702 


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